I 7 \ S CREW 43 second officers are known as senior second, junior second and extra second, and each, like the chief officer, is a duly qualified master, capable of taking the ship around the world if need be. The general duty of the second officer is the navigation of the ship under the captain's directions. Each of these officers stands a four hours ' watch on the bridge, and each during his tour of duty has, as the captain's representative, direct charge of the ship. The third and fourth officers stand a watch of six hours, alternating with each other, and, there are, therefore, always a second and third or fourth officer on watch at the same time. Although in rough weather it is work that tests the strength and tries the nerves of the strongest man, no officer can leave the bridge while on watch, and should he violate this rule, he would be dismissed at once. In addition to his watch the third offi- cer has charge of all the flags and signals by night and day, and he also keeps the compass book, while the fourth officer, besides his work 44 THE SEA EOVERS on the bridge, has charge of the condition of the boats. Observations are taken every two hours, as on an ocean greyhound, rushing over the course between America and Europe at the rate of twenty miles an hour, it is of the first importance that the ship 's position should be known at all times. Fog may come down at any moment, and observations not to be obtainable for several hours. The positions of more than one hundred stars are known, and by observing any of these the ship's whereabouts can be ascertained in a few min- utes. Of course, the "road" becomes more or less familiar to a man who crosses the ocean along the same route year after year, yet this familiarity never breeds contempt or carelessness, for no man knows all the influ- ences that affect the currents of the ocean, and while you will find the current in a given place the same forty times in succession, on the forty-first trip it may be entirely changed. Now and then a big storm that has ended four or five hours before a liner passes a certain AN OCEAN FLYER 'S CREW 45 point may give the surface current a strong set in one direction, and there is no means of telling when these influences may have been at work save by taking the ship's position at frequent intervals. The ship 's crew stand watch and watch, and in each watch there are three quartermasters who have charge of the wheel. Steering in the old days before the introduction of steam gear, was an arduous and too often perilous duty, but to-day, even in the roughest weather, a lad of twelve can easily manage the wheel, which is merely the purchasing end of a mechanical system that opens and shuts the valve governing the steam admitted to the steering cylinders. First-class ships num- ber from twelve to fifteen men in each watch. A certain number of these must be able sea- men, and none are allowed many idle mo- ments. In the middle watches the decks are scrubbed; in the morning watches the paint work is overhauled and cleaned; and finally, when the weather permits, the brass work is polished until it is made as radiant as the 46 THE SEA EOVERS midday sun. This scrubbing, burnishing and cleansing runs through every department, and in no perfunctory way, for each day the ship is inspected thoroughly, and upon the result hangs the possible promotion of the subordinates. Once in every twenty-four hours the cap- tain receives a written report from the first officer, the chief engineer and the chief stew- ard, and at eleven o'clock in the forenoon of each day, accompanied by the doctor, he in- spects all parts of the ship. Let us follow him, if he is gracious enough to give permis- sion, in this daily visit to the underground realm ruled over by the chief engineer and steward. In the fleetest of the liners the en- gineer force numbers nearly two hundred men, divided, as a rule, into three crews, with a double allowance of officers for duty. An engineer keeps watch in each fire-room, and two are stationed on each engine-room plat- form. Watches depend upon the weather. In most cases, the force, officers and men, serve four out of twelve hours, but in foggy AN OCEAN FLYER 'S CREW 47 or stormy weather officers stand at the throt- tles with peremptory orders to do no other work. In relieving each other great care is taken; those going on the platforms feeling the warmth of the bearings, examining the condition of the pins and shafting, testing the valves, locating the position of the throttle, counting the revolutions, and by every tech- nical trial satisfying themselves before as- suming charge that all is right. Distressing at all times is the lot of the poor fellows who man the stoke hole. On the Fiirst Bismarck, for instance, there are twen- ty-four furnaces, manned by thirty-six brawny and half-naked stokers. Suddenly from somewhere in the darkness comes three shrill calls upon a whistle, and instantly each furnace door flies open, and out dart hungry tongues of fire. With averted heads and steaming bodies, four stokers begin to* shovel furiously, while two others thrust their slice- bars through each door and into the mass of fire and flame. Burying their lances deep in the coals, they throw their weights full upon 48 • THE SEA ROVERS the ends as levers, and lift the whole bank of fire several inches. Then they draw ont the lances, leaving a black hole through the fire into which the draft is sucked with an in- creasing roar. Three times they thrust and withdraw the lances, pausing after each charge to plunge their heads in buckets of water, and take deep draughts from bottles of red wine. But this cooling respite lasts only a moment at best, for their taskmasters watch and drive, them, and each furnace must do its stint. It is fair, however, to say that every- thing that can be done to lessen the hardships of the stoke-hole has been done by the steam- ship companies. The best quality of food is given the stokers, and they are allowed double rations of wine and kummel four times a day, practically all they care to drink. The chief engineer of an ocean steamship is fairly well paid, and he deserves to be, for fidelity and merit lead to the engine-room as they do to the bridge, and mastery of the for- mer presupposes long years of exacting serv- ice in subordinate positions. Indeed, many AN OCEAN FLYEE 'S CREW 49 of these officers have given their best years to one employ, and, like the hardy McAn- drews sung by Kipling, deserve much of it in every way. Some of the old chiefs are the greatest travelers in the world, so far as miles may count. One of whom I was told has traversed in the service of one company more than 900,000 shore miles, a distance four times that between the earth and the moon; and still higher is the record of another, who completed before his retirement 154 round trips, making in distance over 1,000,000 stat- ute miles. The captain in his daily tour scrutinizes every nook and corner of the engineer's de- partment, and not less scrupulous is his in- spection of the domain in which the chief steward holds sway. There is good reason for this, since, as far as the comfort of the passengers is concerned, the chief steward is the most important person on board a liner, having charge of the staterooms, dining- room, storerooms and kitchen. Like the en- gine-room the ship's kitchen, located amid- 50 THE SEA ROVERS ships, is an unknown world to most of the passengers. There are, as a matter of fact, three kitchens, besides a serving-room. The soups, fish, meats and vegetables are prepared and cooked in one room and the bread and pastry in another, while the steerage has a kitchen to itself in which all the cooking is done by steam. Space being valuable, all these rooms are small, and meals for 500 or 1,000 people are cooked in an apartment no larger than the kitchen in a low-priced flat, or the pantry in a country house. This makes it necessary to keep everything in its place, and it amazes one to see how compactly the ship 's supplies can be arranged. Nothing is left down on shelves or in drawers which may be hung on hooks, and even the platters and serving dishes are made to hang, there being a loophole at one end for this purpose. Moreover, what the ship's kitchen loses in size is made up in the number of storerooms. Far aft is the main storeroom, which, with its bins reaching from floor to ceiling, and its AN OCEAN FLYER'S CREW 51 racks overhead, looks like a wholesale grocery store. Close at hand is the wine locker, a long place, lined with narrow shelves, which have an upward tilt and are crowded with all sorts and kinds of bottled liquors. Down deeper, most often where the stern rolls in from the counter, is a big compartment, where are stored barrels of flour, potatoes, vinegar and beer, which when needed are hoisted up under the direction of the storekeeper. Pretty well forward is the refrigerating plant, a zinc- lined chamber, where the choicest sides of beef, joints of mutton, chickens and turkeys are kept frozen. All the liners, it may be noted in passing, carry a butcher, whose duty it is to cut the steaks and chops, and to see that no good material goes to waste through unskillful hacking. Adjoining the kitchen is the serving-room or pantry, frescoed with silver coffee-pots and cream-mugs and lined with shelves filled with crockery, while the hook-dotted ceiling glit- ters with an hundred other pieces of silver- 52 THE SEA BOVERS ware which swing and scintillate with every motion of the ship. The shelves are really wooden pockets, faced with strips of wood, which keep the dishes from rolling out, and stowed away there are cups and plates by the hundred. Along the side of the room is a big hot press, having on its top all manner of indentations for the trenchers, saucepans and soup pots which are sent in from the kitchen laden with food at mealtime. This is flanked by a line of glistening tea and coffee urns, while in a convenient corner is a roomy ice- box for the cold meats and butter. To the kitchen and the pantry the store- room is always sending tribute, and they send it to the glass-doored dining-room which, with its long tables, its dazzling white cloths, and its glittering array of silver and glass, looks at night like an enchanted realm. Seats at table are assigned by the steward or the purser, who gives out the seats to those who ask for them first. Each seat is numbered and the passenger receives a billet with his seat number on it when he goes to his first AN OCEAN FLYER'S CREW 53 meal on board. Formerly there was a strug- gle for seats at the captain's table, but now the wise and wary ones rally about the purser and the doctor, for the commander's duties seldom permit him to go below save at dinner- time. Still, wherever his place at table may be fixed, the cabin passenger finds that no op- portunity is neglected to serve his comfort and lighten the tedium of the voyage. On the German lines a band accompanies every ves- sel, and plays through the long first-cabin din- ner, and again on deck in the evening. All German and American holidays are observed on these boats, and when Christmas comes to the travelers at sea, they find themselves in the midst of a Fatherland festival, the chief feature of which is a brightly adorned and illuminated tree. Nor are the steerage pas- sengers forgotten on these occasions, amuse- ments, and a special feast being provided for them. On the boats of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique French festivals and Ameri- can holidays are celebrated by concerts, balls, 54 THE SEA EOVERS dinner parties and extra luxuries at the regu- lar meals. Entertainment is provided for the steerage passengers and a special menu is furnished for the festal days. On such occa- sions, too, the ships are gayly decorated with bunting from stem to stern. The "captain's dinner' ' is another pleasant feature of the voyage on a French liner. This takes place just before the end of the voyage and is re- garded as a token of good will between the passengers and the ship's company. Cham- pagne is furnished without extra charge at this dinner and toasts and speechmaking fol- low. On a British liner on Sunday morning the captain, in full uniform, supported by his officers, reads the Church of England service, to which all are invited, while American and British holidays are observed in a fitting man- ner, the ship being always "dressed" for the occasion. The boats of the British lines have also a concert for the exploitation of the talent on board and a parting dinner given an even- ing or two before arrival in port. Meantime how do the steerage folk get on AN OCEAN FLYER 'S CREW 55 when voyaging over the western ocean? Here there is another and different story to tell. In a ship like the Britannic of the White Star line, picture to yourself a barn-like apartment some seventy feet long and thirty feet wide, but tapering almost to a point at the forward end. It is dimly lighted and badly ventilated by means of a shaft, through which the main- mast enters, and by portholes which are too near the water ever to be opened except in harbor and are well nigh submerged when the vessel lies over or rolls. Lined along the three sides of this rude triangle are large skeleton frames, each upholding two tiers of coffin-like bunks, one above the other, the beds being placed side to side in rows of eight and end to end two deep. Thus each of these structures holds thirty-two bunks, whose sides and bot- toms are of rough boards. A narrow passage- way runs across ship between the pens, of which there are seven in all, making a total of 224 souls who are crowded into these sordid quarters. Picture this to yourself and you have before you the men's cabin of the steer- 56 THE SEA EOVEES age of the Britannic. The room being lighted at night by gasoline lamps, smoking is forbid- den, while all relaxation must be taken on that small portion of the lower deck beyond which no steerage passenger is allowed to roam, for there is no means of amusement or recreation in the cabin. Still there is a brighter side to the picture. All the companies provide ample and whole- some fare for their steerage passengers. No captain ever fails to include in his daily tour a personal and painstaking inspection of this department and he is always approachable in the event of complaints arising on the part of the humblest and poorest traveler. It is related of one old-time commander, Captain John Mirehouse, that in order to assure him- self of the proper quality and preparation of the steerage food he invariably had his lunch served from the steerage galley at the dinner hour ; and he used to declare that his lunches were as wholesome and palatable as he could desire. Nor is it to be supposed that steerage passengers are all immigrants, for, odd as it AN OCEAN FLYER >S CREW 57 may seem, there are many world wanderers who cross and recross in the steerage, who travel over great parts of the world and who in their class are as independent as the men and women lodged in the first cabin. Besides these curious characters there are Scottish carpenters and other mechanics who come to America for a few months at a time to take advantage of higher wages and who return as they came when the Christmas holidays draw nigh. Often a liner leaving New York in the early days of December carries more than 1,000 passengers in the steerage. Whether you travel in the cabin or the steerage, the closing days of a voyage are always sure to be the shortest and the pleas- antest ones. The routine of marine life ceases to be a burden, and with the disappearance of the last lingering cases of sea sickness life on the fleet greyhound of the waters becomes a source of joy. Newly found friends and glimpses of passing vessels cheer and break the solitude, while the tonic of the sea air courses like an elixir in the blood. Young 58 THE SEA ROVERS couples flirt demurely in shady corners of the deck, whence issue now and again sudden bursts of rippling laughter; nor is there lack of jollity in the smoking room, whence eddy the flotsam and jetsam of the ship and cards rule the hour from early forenoon until the lights are turned out at night. If it be sum- mer and the passage a westward one you may count, as a rule, upon skirting the Grand Banks without mishap and upon rounding the Georges in the same lucky manner. Then, after long and eager waiting, comes the happy hour when there is a cry of i ' Sail, ho, ' ' and a few minutes later a yawl emerges from the gathering darkness and a bluff, black-garbed pilot climbs to the ship 's deck, bringing news from the outer world and the glad assurance that land and home are just beyond the hori- zon line. Soon comes the welcome cry, ' ' There she is, Fire Island light, right over the starboard bow." The watcher in the lighthouse tele- graphs the steamer's arrival to the quaran- tine station and the ship news office, and AN OCEAN FLYER 'S CREW 59 long before noon the vessel reaches quaran- tine. Here the health officer boards her, and if it is found that she has no case of conta- gious disease on board she is permitted to proceed to her dock, which she reaches in about one hour and a half, including the time of examination. Meanwhile she has been met down the bay by a revenue cutter having a squad of customs officers on board and dec- larations have been made and signed by the cabin passengers as to the contents of their trunks, which are searched as soon as the vessel arrives at her dock. Here, also, an officer of the Immigration Bureau takes charge of the steerage passengers and has folk and baggage conveyed to the Barge Office for the examination which will impel their return to the place from which they came or end in the granting of permission for them to enter the land of mystery and promise. Within the hour in which the liner reaches her moorings on the New York or Jersey shore the last passenger has taken his depar- 60 THE SEA ROVERS ture, shore leave has been granted to the ma- jority of the ship's company and waiting hands have promptly taken in hand the task of makmjr ready for the leviathan's next ocean pilgrimage, since, as I said at the out- set, one voyage is no sooner ended than prep- arations for another are begun. CHAPTER ni THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN It is by no means an easy task to secure ad- mission to the United States Navy, and of those who present themselves for enlistment in ordinary times about one man in a dozen is accepted. Landsmen furnish a great ma- jority of recruits, and of these more come, it is said, from New York than any other city in the country. The candidate who presents himself on board of any one of the receiving ships constantly in commission for enlistment purposes is first put through a rigid oral ex- amination' designed to prove his mental and moral makeup. If he passes this test the re- cruiting officer turns him over to the examin- ing surgeon, by whom the discovery of the slightest physical defect is counted as suffi- 61 62 THE SEA EOVERS cient ground for the candidate's rejection. If, however, he passes the doctor he is vaccinated and sent back to the recruiting officer, who swears him in for a three years ' cruise, after which he is turned over to the paymaster's clerk to draw his uniforms and small stores. A month of preliminary training on the re- ceiving ship follows. Here he is put through the well-known " setting-up drill, ' ' which is designed to give the full use of the muscles and feet and to develop the agility and endur- ance necessary to the performance of ship duty. This exercise is of daily occurrence while the recruit is in the early stage of his enlistment and is practiced frequently during the entire period of service, being part of the drill of every ship 's company. The recruit is also given practice in what is known as "the boat drill," and when opportunity offers in the manning and manipulation of the guns. At the end of his first month comes the newly enlisted man's assignment to a vessel in active cruising service. Here, with a goodly batch of other landsmen, he is taken in hand THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 63 by the master-at-arms, gets a ship's number and a mess kit, learns where to stow his cloth- ing and hammock, and is part and parcel of the life on a man-of-war. The recruit's first days on shipboard are apt to put his nerves and temper to the test, for the old-timers among the ship 's company are sure to let pass no opportunity to bedevil and confound him. Calking mat is the name given to the piece of matting which the blue- jacket spreads upon the deck when he wants to take a nap and which protects his uniform from being soiled. He buys it himself, but never a landsman went aboard his first ship that he was not told to go to the master-at- arms for a calking mat. Now, the average master-at-arms on a man-of-war is a man who, having been in the navy for half a life- time, has ceased to find amusement in the calking-mat request preferred to him by sev- eral thousand recruits, and as a consequence the reception the newcomer gets when he approaches Jimmy Legs on this matter is liable to be a badly mixed affair of boots and 64 THE SEA ROVERS language. Again, recruits are often sent to the officer of the deck to prefer absurd ques- tions or questions on matters in which they have no concern. When one of these recruits walks up to the officer of the deck and, after a bow, innocently asks when the ship is to sail he is in for a speedy if disgraceful scramble forward. Or on his first day aboard a man-of- war the recruit is often told that in order to go below to his locker he must first get per- mission from the officer of the deck. ' ' To my locker below, sir, may I go, sir?" he is told to say when he goes to the mast to ask for the desired permission. If the officer of the deck happens to be in good humor he will turn away to preserve his dignity by not smiling, but if his temper is on edge the recruit is in for a lesson in directness of language that will make him wish he had not thrown over his job ashore. Trials of this sort, however, soon have an ending. The average recruit quickly masters the marine ropes, and instances are not uncommon of clever landsmen who have finished their first three years ' cruise as chief THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 65 petty officers, drawing from $50 to $75 a month. Besides the receiving ships regularly de- voted to the enlistment of naval recruits on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts American war- ships are constantly shipping men, both in home and foreign ports, to fill gaps in crews. In this way many peculiar geniuses, men of really remarkable attainments along certain lines, gain admission into the navy as enlisted men. At Bangkok a few years ago an Ameri- can man-of-war shipped a German as a mess- room attendant. He was a fine-looking man of thirty and had little to say to his mates. One morning at sea soon after the German's enlistment a knot of officers gathered in the wardroom were discussing a difficult point in ordnance. The messroom attendant, who was watching out for the officers' needs, ven- tured to enter into the discussion. He did it, however, so quietly and respectfully and at once showed such perfect knowledge of the topic in hand that the officers found them- selves listening to him with much interest. In 66 THE SEA ROVERS five minutes the German had shown that there was no detail of the armanent of the world's navies with which he was not familiar and that he was a past master in all matters per- taining to modern great guns. His proficiency in this respect being reported to the command- ing officer, he was made a chief gunner 's mate and was about to be a gunner when his time expired and he went to Germany, where he was employed by the Krupps as an ordnance expert. It came out that he had spent his life in the ordnance branch of the Krupp works and that he had been compelled to leave Ger- many suddenly on account of some trouble in which he had become involved. He had gone to Siam in the hope of getting an oppor- tunity to rearrange the Siamese fortifications. Failing in this, and discouraged and penni- less, he had shipped in the American navy. "Once a sailor always a sailor" is not strictly true of men-of-warsmen of the Ameri- can navy. Less than one-half of the men who complete one enlistment ship for a second three years' cruise, but a majority of the men THE MAN-OF-WAKSMAN 67 who put in two cruises settle down to a life- long continuance in the service, for when a bluejacket has passed one or two summers in the latitude of the North Cape and a couple of winters among the West Indies or in the South Pacific he is pretty sure to acquire a dislike for the climate of the United States that keeps him in the navy for good and all. Moreover, after a few years in the navy a bluejacket becomes possessed of the idea that he is really doing nothing aboard ship to earn his $16 a month and board. Herein, however, he unconsciously proves himself a humorist, for the routine of life on a man-of-war is in reality a hard and labor- ious one. Reveille is sounded at daybreak, and the men who have not been on watch dur- ing the night turn out of their hammocks, lash and stow their bedding and get early coffee and biscuit. Then clothes are scrubbed, decks washed down and dried and the ship's side and boats cleaned, so that when the breakfast call is sounded at 7:30 o'clock most of her morning toilet has been made. 68 THE SEA BOVERS Breakfast over, tHe men light their pipes and loll at ease until the uniform of the day is announced, whereupon they array them- selves in the garb prescribed and when the " turn-to' ' call has been sounded proceed to their several tasks. The days and even the hours and minutes of men-of-warsmen are al- lotted to special duties. Every day they are put through drill, sometimes with great guns, sometimes with cutlasses, sometimes with small boats and in many other ways. More- over, arms and accoutrements have to be cleaned daily, the ordnance freed from rust and stain and the brasswork kept polished. While this is going on the bugle sounds the sick call and all who feel the need of the surgeon's care repair to the sick bay, after which a list of those unfit for service is furnished the officer of the deck, so that their duties can be at- tended to by their mates. The morning is still young when the order comes, " Clear up the decks for inspection. ' ' Cleaning rags are put away, hands washed, an extra hitch given to the trousers, and then THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 69 the call to quarters is sounded. The men go to their stations at the various guns, their officers appear and a swift inspection of their appearance is made, after which the several divisional officers report to the executive officer. The last named is armed with a list of those who are legitimately absent and checks off the absentees reported by the division offi- cers. When this task is finished the executive reports to the captain, who is standing near and who then makes a tour of th*e ship, in- specting battery and crew. Following inspec- tion comes some of the drills already referred to, dinner at noon, an hour for its discussion and smoking, and more drills during the af- ternoon, ending with the setting-up drill just before the bugle sounds for supper. After that meal the men are at liberty to do very much as they please unless a search- light or night signal drill happens to be scheduled for the evening. With 9 o'clock comes taps and the cry of the master-at-arms, 1 ' Turn in your hammocks and keep silence ' ' — an order that must be obeyed, for on a man- 70 THE SEA ROVERS of -war the sleep of the crew when the hour comes is a sacred thing and not to be dis- turbed. The modern battleship is first of all a fight- ing machine, and that being the chief pur- pose for which it is created it is natural that the drill of "clearing ship for action' ' is one to which particular attention should be given. Following it always is a mimic encounter with an imaginary foe. Not the slightest detail in preparation is ever neglected and only blood and shrieks and wounds are lacking to make the imaginary battle as realistic as an actual one would be. As soon as the cry of the boatswain's mate echoes from the main deck the bugle sounds the "assembly" on the gun and berth decks and the officers and men at once hurry to their allotted stations. Quiet is insisted upon; there is little confusion, and the swirling tide set in motion by the boatswain's call has no conflicting currents. So far as is possible each of the squads into which the ship 's com- pany is divided is berthed and messed in that THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 71 section of the ship in which its duties will lie in the hour of battle. Thus on a battleship like the Virginia a portion of the first division improvises as soon as the call is sounded a breastwork for sharpshooters, using ham- mocks and awnings. Meanwhile others of the same division rig collision mats, unship the railing around the forecastle, lower anchor davits in cradles and carry below and secure levers and tackles. At the same time other divisions lower and un- ship awning stanchions and railing in wake of the guns, close water-tight compartments, rig in and secure danger booms, unship ladders and supply fresh water for drinking purposes. Magazines are opened and lanterns trimmed, battle bucklers are fitted to air ports, and those detailed to attend speaking tubes in the wake of torpedo tubes go to their stations and receive and respond to the signals sent out from the central station. Nor is the sur- geon 's division less busy at this critical hour ; its members convert the wardroom into a tem- porary operating room, remove rugs and cur- 72 THE SEA ROVERS tains and see that the adjoining staterooms are made ready for the reception of the wounded. There is an enormous amount of work to be done before a ship can be got in readiness, but in little more than a half hour after the order is given the captain hears from his executive officer the report, "Ship is ready for action, sir." The gun crews, stripped to the waist, with their knotty mus- cles standing out in high relief, wait for the order to begin the fighting; and when it comes the great guns are elevated, depressed, con- centrated and put through all the maneuvers possible in an actual battle. After this there is a moment's rest, and then, last of all, the order is given to repel boarders. The enemy is alongside and swarming over the bulwarks. The men in the tops pour down a murderous fire with rifles and Maxim and Gatling guns ; headed by their officers, the men on deck, cut- lass in one hand and revolver in the other, slash and hew, shoot and hack until the enemy turn tail and flee as fast as their imaginary legs can carry them. The ship is saved. THE MAN-OF-WAESMAN 73 When at sea half of the crew of a man-of- war is always on duty and the other half tak- ing a rest. The latter court their ease in many ways. Some stretch out on the hard deck and take a nap, others play checkers, spin yarns, write letters or read novels. Some are lost in reverie; all of them look careless and happy and nearly all of them smoke or chew tobacco. Music often claims a group of them at any hour of the day, and at night dancing is sometimes indulged in, always with wild de- light. A stranger who strays into the fore- castle observes that a few of its inhabitants wear double-breasted coats and linen collars. These are the men of rank before the mast and they are known as petty officers. The master-at-arms, the machinists and the yeo- man are among the chief of these, and other petty officers are the boatswain's mates, gun- ner's mates and carpenter's mates. They are, comparatively speaking, high in rank above the rest of the crew and are treated accord- ingly by the latter. They have a mess table by themselves, presided over by the master- 74 THE SEA EOVERS at-arms and adorned by glassware, crockery and napkins. All mess tables on a ship are large enough for ten or fifteen men to sit at and one of the company is selected by his mates to act as caterer. Meals are always well-behaved affairs, particularly at the tables of the petty officers, for the sense of rank is as keen before the mast as it is abaft among the commissioned officers. Every officer and man on a ship is subordinate or superior to some- body else and he cannot forget that his official relations even with his bosom companions are among the laws of the land. Nor do the exi- gencies of confined space interfere with this sense of rank. A bluejacket may have to dodge around an admiral and give orders under his nose, but there is still a gulf between them not to be bridged by any man. In a visit to the forecastle among all the crowd there the youngest sailors and the ap- prentice boys are those that attract one the most. Their alert, intelligent faces give one a pleasant idea of the coming American man- of-warsman and attest the efficacy of the THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 75 method employed to fit them for their future career. The present naval apprentice sys- tem of the United States has been in force since 1875. The candidate for an apprentice- ship must be from fourteen to eighteen years of age, of robust frame, intelligent, of sound and healthy constitution and able to read and write. The boy who is found to be qualified signs an agreement to serve continuously un- til he is twenty-one years of age and is sent to the training station at Coaster's Harbor Isl- and, near Newport, where is anchored a re- ceiving ship capable of comfortably accom- modating 500 apprentices. The boys sleep in hammocks, assist in keeping the ship clean and in various ways are gradually accustomed to a nautical life. The daily routine begins at 5 :30, when reveille is sounded and all ham- mocks are lashed and stowed. After an early breakfast the boys wash their clothes, scrub decks and bathe, and then for about six hours are daily occupied with drills and studies, the course of instruction including gunnery, sea- manship and English. The hours after sup- 76 THE SEA EOVERS per until 9 o'clock, when all must be in their hammocks, and Saturday afternoons are given up to recreation. Many kinds of games are furnished the boys, and they have also free access to a good library. Each apprentice on leaving Coaster's Har- bor Island spends a year on a training ship and is then transferred to a regular man-of- war. Here his education is still continued, and the end of his enlistment generally finds him thoroughly acquainted with a modern ship and her armanent and fitted to take the billet of a petty officer. Many of the appren- tices who re-enlist are sent to the Washington Navy Yard for a six months' course of in- struction in gunnery, a limited number being afterward detailed to the Naval War College at Newport for an equal length of time to be given a practical knowledge of electricity and torpedoes. They then graduate into the ser- vice with the rank and pay of seamen-gunners, and that the training they have received war- rants its cost is proved by the assertion of experts that American gunners have not their A MAN-OF-WARSMAX THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 77 superior in any navy of the world. The mak- ing of an American man-of-warsman is a pro- cess worth while. In peaceful times one day is very much like another on an American man-of-war, but there are four days of special importance in the calendar of the bluejacket serving thereon. These are general muster day, general inspec- tion day and Thanksgiving and Christmas days. The first-named marks the observance of a ceremony of great importance to the par- ticipants — the reading of the articles of war or rules which have been framed for the gov- ernment of the navy. Unlike other musters and routine drills which take place day after day with the utmost regularity, this function is observed not oftener than once a month. On most ships the first Sunday of each month is reserved for this purpose, but it frequently happens that two or three months elapse be- tween one general muster and the next. Shortly before 10 o'clock in the morning of the day selected the chief boatswain's mate passes the order through the ship of "All 78 THE SEA EOVERS hands to muster." At once every soul on the vessel except the sick and, if at sea, half a dozen others who cannot be spared from the wheel and engine room repairs aft to the quarterdeck, where the members of the crew range themselves in long ranks on the port side of the deck, facing the officers, who stand in a line on the starboard side, where they are placed according to rank, with the senior officer aft. All the officers are in full dress, with cocked hat and epaulettes and gold lace on coats and trousers, while the men must ap- pear in their best, with shoes polished and clothes well brushed. When the last straggler has taken his place the senior lieutenant, raising a white-gloved hand to his cocked hat, salutes the captain and informs him that all his officers and men are ' ' up and aft. ' ' After this, by order of the officer of the deck, silence reigns. At a word from the commander the senior lieutenant begins to read the articles of war, and as he does so all heads are uncovered. Simple yet eloquent is this expression of the faith in THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 79 which every naval officer must live. "The commanders of all fleets, squadrons, naval stations and vessels belonging to the navy, ,, runs the wording of the first article, ' ' are re- quired to show in themselves a good example of virtue, honor, patriotism and subordina- tion/ ? The second article earnestly recom- mends all officers and seamen in the naval service diligently to attend on every perform- ance of the worship of Almighty God. Fur- ther on is another article which informs every listener — and every one of the hundreds as- sembled is an intent listener — that "the pun- ishment of death or such other punishment as a court-martial may adjudge may be in- flicted on any person in the naval service who enters into a mutiny or who disobeys the law- ful orders of his superior officer or who strikes the flag to an enemy or rebel." The same penalty awaits any one who in time of war deserts or who sleeps upon his watch, or who when in battle "displays cowardice, negli- gence or disaffection or keeps out of danger to which he should expose himself." These of- 80 THE SEA EOVEES fenses are only a few of the many which all wearers of the uniform are enjoined not to commit. Some of the others are " profane swearing, falsehood, drunkenness, gambling, fraud, theft or any other scandalous conduct tending to the destruction of good morals ;" and it also is forbidden to any one to be guilty of cruelty toward any person subject to his orders. Other parts of the articles contain similar injunctions to all in the navy to main- tain the honor of the flag and the integrity of their lives. As a f ructifier of patriotism the importance of this ceremony cannot be easily overesti- mated. Lukewarmness has no place in its presence, and any one who witnesses it cannot fail to be impressed by its disclosure of a faith that one feels sure could remove mountains. In remote lands it is a rite which borrows added seriousness from its foreign surround- ings. Its words have often echoed against the walls of foreign forts while a Sabbath calm has brooded over the latter and robbed them of their threatening aspect, and many a THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN . 81 time during its performance American sailors have been able to look up from their quarter- decks to the cottages and fields of some other land where a different creed is held and with just as strong a faith as their own. No one can doubt that while this ceremony lives the country is stronger and safer than it would be without it. The reading of the articles of war consumes a scant quarter hour. When it is finished the order is given and repeated by the boat- swain's mate for all petty officers to muster in the starboard gangway. They form in two long ranks. At the end nearest the quarter- deck stands the master-at-arms and then come yeoman, writers, machinists, the apothecary, printer, painter, electrician, bandmaster, boatswain's mate, gunner's mates, quarter- masters, oilers, water tenders and ship's cor- porals. The paymaster or his clerk starts to muster the crew, calling out each man's full name, and the latter answers with his rating. When the petty officers are all mustered they are allowed to leave and go forward — always 82 THE SEA ROVERS being cautioned to keep quiet. Then follows a scene that reminds one of the early days of the navy — a custom more than a century old and borrowed originally from the English. It is called "going around the mast. ,, When each man's name is called he answers with his rating, removes his cap, walks around the mast to the starboard side and goes forward. This is kept up until all seamen, ordinary sea- men, landsmen, coal heavers, firemen and bandsmen have passed under the inspection of the captain, who stands near the mainmast intently watching and forming an opinion of each man as he passes before him. When all have gone forward the order is given by the executive officer to "pipe down," the shrill whistles sound and general muster is over. General inspection day on a man-of-war usually follows close upon the termination of a foreign cruise and involves no end of labor on the part of officers and crew. In the early morning of the day appointed the last touches are given to the ship 's bright metal work, the last rubs to its great brown guns. The decks THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 83 are scrubbed and holystoned, so that the keen eye of the executive officer cannot find a spot. The bluejackets give a last turn to their ham- mocks and a last pat to their kits, for not a thing will escape the scrutiny of the board of inspection and survey. When the members of that body appear they find waiting for them on the main deck the whole crew, spick and span, with their kits, long canvas bags containing their white and blue clothing done up in neat rolls. While a part of the board examines these to see if any of the men have failed to roll them properly the other mem- bers go below to inspect the ship. They visit the wardroom, staterooms and forecastle ; ex- amine the water-tight compartments, the boil- ers, engines, bunkers and magazines and the wood and metal work, passing over no dark corner in gallery or pantry in which may lurk dirt or other signs of neglect. All this, however, is preliminary to the real labors of the day, for when the members of the board of inspection have again assembled on deck comes the eagerly expected order, 84 THE SEA ROVERS "Clear the ship for action!" Instantly the long roll is beaten, the boatswain's whistle sounds, and from the bowels of the ship the members of the crew come tumbling out, swarming over the deck in what seems the wildest confusion, but is in reality perfect order. Every man has certain duties and much drilling has taught him how to perform them in the simplest, readiest and easiest manner. The whole deck crew is organized into divisions and each division has its sep- arate and particular work. One division lashes fast the big anchors and makes them as secure as possible. Another takes care of the boats. The spare spars are got out and lashed together. The boats are lashed into a nest, plugs pulled out so that they will fill with water and float with gunwales awash. The nest is lashed to the spars that will serve as a drag and a buoy to mark their location, and then spars and boats are put over the side and left to drift as they will. While this is going on other divisions are at work with the rail and awning stanchions. THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 85 Every thing comes down. The pegs are knocked out of the davit hinges and the big iron bars are folded over to the deck. Every- thing movable that can be put out of the way is stowed in its proper pace swiftly and silently. The battle gratings are brought out and fitted over the hatches. Any thing that might be knocked to pieces by a shell or shot to splinters by small fire is carried below, and when the work is finished not a superfluous bar or beam, not an extra rod, box, implement or article of any sort stands on the deck to cumber the desperate work of the ship in her life and death struggle. At the same time the powder magazines are opened and the great guns swing around for action, shot and shell piled up about them. The tops are manned; every small gun is ready with its crew to hurl a deluge of mis- siles of all shapes and sizes ; rifles, pistols and cutlasses are served out to the men, and in the space of time it costs to write these lines the ship lies at anchor ready to blow an ad- 86 THE SEA ROVERS versary off the face of the water or to be blown off herself. With the ship cleared for action, there is drill at the great gnns and execution of the order to repel boarders. After this the ship is again put in condition and the bugle sounds to quarters. The ship's bell has struck the alarm for fire. In a trice long lines of hose are laid and men hurry around with their ex- tinguishers on their backs. The "smother- ers," with their hammocks, are ready for work, axmen are stationed to cut away wood- work and sentinels are posted prepared to flood the magazines. There is neither hitch nor break in the drill, and at its conclusion the men go to their well-earned noonday meal. After dinner the marines are ordered to land and attack a distant fort. The boats are lowered away and provisioned for several days. Water, beef, beans, cartridges, rifles, guns and boxes of tools are stowed away in them, and then the men pile into them until it seems as if they must sink under their load. THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 87 Many colored flags flutter from the mainyard of the big ship, the launches take the boats in tow and off they start. They do not go far, however, for soon a signal from the ship countermands the order to attack and they re- turn and are hauled on board. Then comes a drill that is looked upon with regretful pride by the old tars who still love the shapely ships of the past and cannot overcome their dislike for the modern ' ' teakettles ; ' ' it is a sail drill. The sailors scamper aloft, lay out on the big yards and soon the ship, with all sails set, is tugging at her anchors. Again the boat- swain's whistle sounds. The executive officer, trumpet in hand, shouts his orders and the yards gradually come down until the ship is under close-reefed topsails. Then the sails are furled, the yards squared and the men wait for the next command. They do not have to wait long. A luckless man — imaginary, of course — falls overboard. There is another hurry and scurry, a life buoy is thrown to the drowning man, the cutter is lowered away and under the powerful strokes of six oars sweeps 88 THE SEA KOVEBS past the ship to the rescue. The man is saved and the cutter again hoisted on board. This ends the work of the day and all hands are piped to snpper. Soon the sunset gun booms, once more the bugle sounds and the great striped flag at the stern comes down. General inspection day is over. The crew of an American warship celebrate Thanksgiving day in the good old-fashioned style, which means that the dinner is made the chief incident. About this all the interest of the holiday gathers, and the feast is en- joyed in anticipation, in realization and in reminiscence. The expense of the extras which supplement the ordinary rations on that occasion is borne entirely by the men. Ordinarily Jack is a most improvident crea- ture who sees no reason for worrying himself about what he is to eat to-morrow so long as he has enough for to-day, but for Thanksgiv- ing and Christmas he makes unusual effort to save something to put into the common fund for the occasion. His comrades are gen- erous, however, and if, as often happens, his THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 89 pockets are light when the contributions are being taken up he is not allowed to miss the feast, but may have his share charged up against him, to be paid at a more convenient season. One way in which the men save their money is by commuting their rations. The amount of food furnished by the government is ex- tremely liberal, so that the daily ration pro- vided for each sailor is more than he can eat under ordinary circumstances. The value of a daily ration is put at 30 cents. A common practice is for ten men to draw rations for only seven. If the mess consists of thirty men the value of the commuted rations would thus amount to $2.70 a day. This is multiplied by the time pay day comes around to a consider- able sum and is paid back to the men with their wages. Part of it at a time like Thanks- giving is devoted to buying the luxuries of the dinner. The fund kept or raised for this purpose has always been known as the " slush fund." The term dates back to the early days of the 90 THE SEA ROVERS navy when the men were allowed to save the pork drippings and other grease, odd ends of rope and all kinds of waste about the ship and sell them to junk dealers for whatever they could get. "Slush" was the general name given to the waste stuff and the money which it brought in was the ' ' slush fund. ' ' This dis- position of the refuse is now taken out of the mens' hands, but they still continue to call their dinner fund by its ancient title. A Thanksgiving dinner among the men-of- warsmen is a festivity well worth seeing. Nothing is done by halves, and the messroom decorations and the table furnishings would do credit to many a more pretentious assem- bly. The messrooms are brightly lighted up and their usually bare walls are gayly draped with American flags. Instead of the every-day enamel cloth the tables are covered with spotless white linen. If the ship is in port the celebration can be much more elaborate, because the men are then able fo buy, beg or borrow from their friends on shore any number of ornamental articles with THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 91 which to beautify the tables. Vases of flowers are artistically arranged about, and a great cake with a fanciful superstructure of icing is a favorite adornment. Enormous turkeys stand watch at each end of the tables at the beginning of the feast, but they disappear early in the action and their places are taken later by relays of mince and pumpkin pies. ' ' Spuds, ' ' as all sailors call potatoes, are plen- tiful, affording ample proof of Jack's tra- ditional fondness for this vegetable. Besides tea and coffee the only drink is beer. The men are allowed to have this not only on special occasions, by the way, but at any time when they have money to pay for it at the general canteen. At dinner time on almost any day a few of the men may be seen with open bottles of beer before their places at the table. However, after all is said and done, Christ- mas is the rarest day in the naval calendar, the celebration in American fashion being never neglected on a United States man-of- war in port or at sea. The ship is dressed 92 THE SEA ROVERS fore and aft with banners, and in port her decks are piled with green stuff. In any of the ports in low latitudes, like Callao or Mon- tevideo, the mass of palms and ferns dis- tributed on Christmas on the spar deck of a warship gives the vessel a lovely holiday ap- pearance. Bluejackets always hang up their socks on Christmas eve. Each takes a new pair out of his ditty bag and strings it to the foot last of his hammock. Examined in the morning, they are commonly found filled with fine, dusty coal, lumps of salt-water soap or pieces of broken candle, but their owners hang them up from year to year, willing to sacrifice a pair of socks to the perpetuation of the cus- tom. On Christmas day there are all manner of games on the spar deck. They are for the most part humorous games and are devised chiefly for the amusement of the men who through misconduct are not permitted to spend the day ashore. In the evening there is always some good music in the forecastle or on the berth deck. On some ships the blue- jackets essay the most ambitious airs, and if THE MAN-OF-WARSMAN 93 the bandmaster takes care to put the singers of the crew on the right path one of their Christmas night concerts is worth going a long way to hear. CHAPTER IV SOLDIERS WHO SERVE AFLOAT Soldiers who serve afloat — such are the men composing the United States Marine Corps. Lack of military qualities in the sailor led to the corps' formation in the first days of the navy, nor has the passing of the years wrought any material change in the character of Jack Tar. Formidable in impetuous as- saults, he lacks the steadiness and discipline necessary in sustained conflicts and in the effective use of the rifle, and so with the navy's growth the Marine Corps has come to constitute one of its most important branches. The marines are useful in times of peace for police duty in the navy yards and on ship- board, but it is when the country is engaged in war that they most fully justify their ex- 94 SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 95 istence. Then it is their duty to man the rapid-firing guns of our warships, fill vacan- cies at the other guns, with their rifles scour the decks of the enemy from the tops, the poop and the forecastle, cover boarding par- ties with their fire and repel boarders with fixed bayonets. Should the enemy gain a foothold they must gather at the mainmast, so as to command the deck. They must make the small arms effective and disable the enemy's men while the great guns, with which the marines have nothing to do save in case of emergency, play havoc with his ship. However, all naval fighting, as recent events have proved, is not done on the decks of men-of-war ; the surprise of camps or posts and the escalade of forts frequently render shore operations necessary, and at such times picked men are sent with the attacking sail- ors, known as pioneers, while the rest of the marines form a supporting column to cover the retreat and embarkation of the sailors in ; case the undertaking fails. In times of fire on shipboard the marines guard the boats' 96 THE SEA ROVERS falls and officers' quarters, prevent panic or pillage, compel compliance with orders of offi- cers and allow no one to throw overboard any property or fitting or abandon the ship until duly authorized. Finally a frequent duty of the marines abroad is to guard the American legations and consulates and the interests of American citizens in times of revolution or public disorder. With duties so varied and exacting ahead of him, the making of a marine is a process well worth studying. Recruits for the corps come from all stations of life. In its ranks may be found well-educated men, now and then a college graduate among them, who have become reduced by misfortune or bibulous habits, country boys who have left the farm for the city to seek their fortunes and found want instead, and men who have lost their occupations. All find a refuge in the corps, provided they are physically and mentally sound, at least five feet six inches in height, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, unmarried and of good habits. SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 97 The recruit as an essential part of his train- ing must learn how to do well many different things. He begins, if a stranger to military science, by mastering the drills and manual of arms and every evolution possible to a body of men on foot, since he must leave the ship when there is work to be done and be able to move quickly and with precision under the most galling fire. The ax, the shovel and the pick must also become familiar tools in his hands, and that he may fight to the best pos- sible advantage he is taught to delve and heap until a breastwork is built. After that he must accustom himself to the dragging straps of a light artillery piece and learn how to haul it at a breakneck pace down into the ditch he has dug and up on the other side to the crown of the intrenchment. Then, as no one else comes up to load, aim and fire it for him, he must learn all that a field artilleryman knows and become skillful in the handling and quick and sure in the aim of his howitzer. When so much of his apprenticeship has been accomplished the marine climbs the 98 THE SEA EOVERS ship's side and makes acquaintance with his duties as a marine policeman. The end of the first month afloat finds him on guard at every post in the ship. He knows each compart- ment and gangway ; has been instructed in the working of the guns from the heavy turret pieces to the six-pounders; has watched the magazines and carried messages to the offi- cers, and has even gone down to the coal bunk- ers, if the ship happens to be coaling in a hurry, and taken his turn at passing coal. However, he is still only a marine in the making, and this fact is brought home to him when the ship goes out for target practice and, with a bluejacket for a teacher, he learns to handle and supply ammunition to the lifts in the magazines and to work the lifts them- selves, so that when the need comes he can take Jack's place and do his work. In the old days of sailing ships the marines had to know how to splice a rope or furl a sail ; nowadays he does not need to, but he must learn to make his way quickly and nimbly to the fighting tops. In doing so he does not have to climb SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 99 to a ratline, one minute almost in the sea and the next at the very top of the heavens, but he gets painfully dizzy when for the first time he feels the ship sinking away from under him as he looks down. In the end he masters that also and, with practice, is soon able to make the little guns in the fighting tops talk as fast as the best of the jackies. When he has learned to descend from his aerial nest to the deck at a dignified pace and to land safely upon his feet, his education is practically com- pleted, and it has taken him from six months to a year to get it. Every navy yard in the country has its de- tachment of marines, but the barracks at the Brooklyn yard are the most popular, and as the marines have their choice of stations when they return from a cruise, the largest number, seldom less than three hundred, are usually quartered there. In the part of the yard set aside for the marines is a long and narrow building of gray brick, with a piazza running its entire length, shaded by a line of trees. This is the barracks, the living quarters of the 100 THE SEA EOVEES men. A roomy parade ground stretches out in front, and in a group of trees to the left, with a garden behind, is the house of the com- mandant of marines, while at about the same distance to the right are the quarters of the other officers, each approached by a stone walk canopied and shaded by rows of pear trees. Visit the Brooklyn barracks of a summer morning and you will find the marine there in every condition known to the corps and in every stage of his development. Out on the parade ground is a squad of raw recruits be- ing commanded and marched about in the effort to trim off their individuality of mo- tion, and here comes Private Dougherty, with his wheelbarrow and sickle, a bronze-faced old man who was retired awhile back because his thirty years of service had been com- pleted. There is hardly a seaport in the world that Dougherty is not familiar with, and he will tell you, when in the mood, how he killed the Corean general. The Colorado, flagship of Eear Admiral Eodgers, steamed up the SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 101 Salee river, in Corea, far the purpose of ef- fecting a treaty with the Coreans for the pro- tection of shipwrecked American sailors and to make surveys and soundings. Her survey boats were treacherously fired upon by the forts in the river and a fight began. After one of the forts had been captured and its former occupants driven out, Dougherty jumped over the parapet, ran down to where the Corean leader was rallying his forces and shot him dead. For this service to his coun- try Congress voted Dougherty a medal of honor. And well he had earned it. Ashore or afloat, the daily life of the marine is one of hard work and plenty of it. At 6 :30 in the morning, when in barracks, the men must be out of bed and ready fifteen minutes later for the ' ' setting-up ' ' drill, which is gym- nastic exercise without apparatus. Then the mess call is sounded and they file into the long messroom, furnished with two tables ex- tending the whole length, and breakfast on hash, pork and beans or beef stew, according to the day in the week, and bread and coffee. 102 THE SEA ROVEES After breakfast the order is given, "To the colors ! ' p and the flag is raised on the pole in front of the guardhouse. Then the guards take their posts and the routine of the day be- gins, reaching a climax at 10 :30 o'clock, the hour of dress parade, when the marines are out in full force. Each remaining hour of the day has its al- lotted duty, but every marine with a clean record has twenty hours out of every forty-eight to himself. Many of the marines stationed at the Brooklyn yard spend their idle hours in the library, a light, airy room on the second floor of the barracks, furnished with a goodly collection of books and with a number of the weekly and monthly maga- zines. But as to the books, some of the most assiduous readers know the contents of them all, and long for more. Nor need the private of marines end his life in the ranks unless he be so minded. A school is provided for him where, if he elects to do so, he may conquer fractions and cube root, and in time, after his studies have raised him to the grade of ser- SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 103 geant-major in the ranks, should there chance to come a war the line is open to him, and once his ivory-hilted officer's sword and gold lace are worn he has the entree to any officers' mess and a place that no man but one of his own line can fill. That the men in the ranks who choose to employ their leisure hours in study get their reward was proven in the war with Spain, which raised no less than thirty sergeant-majors to the dignity of shoul- der straps. The dominant desire of the ambitious young marine is, of course, to get to sea. The work there is harder than in the barracks, but he does not consider that when he thinks of life afloat and the foreign ports to which it will take him. During his five years' enlist- ment in the corps each capable marine makes two sea voyages, extending over a period of three years. On shipboard the shore drills are continued as far as practicable and to them, as already hinted, is added target prac- tice. His time off duty the marine spends in the forecastle and amidships reading, sleep- 104 THE SEA ROVERS ing, writing up his diary or twanging the strings of his favorite instrument, the guitar. The things which chiefly occupy his thoughts, however, are rations and going ashore. As to the former, they are consider- ably better than he gets at the barracks and may be augmented from the bumboats — a genuine boon to the luxury-loving marines. These bumboats approach the men-of-war at every port with articles of utility and food in great profusion, and the American marine has a worldwide reputation among their pro- prietors for his generosity. Ah Sam, of the port of Hong Kong, the greatest man in the world in his line, whose boats are fifty and sixty ton junks, is said to have made his for- tune from sales to American men-of-war. At any rate, when one enters or leaves the harbor he fires a salute of twenty-one guns. And it is only fair that the marine should have a salute fired on his own account now and then, for he is a leading and important figure in all the pomp and ceremony of man- of-war life. Indeed, it is an interesting and SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 105 pretty sight to watch the ceremonies which take place on board ship on the arrival of a high official, such as an ambassador, an ad- miral, a general or a consul. As the cutter dashes up to the side with spray flying from the oars the ship's bugle sounds "Attention." The side boys offer the man ropes as the offi- cial steps on the gangway and the captain receives him as he steps on the quarterdeck. As the two walk aft the marine officer, in quick, sharp tones, commands, "Present arms," and the whole marine guard, drawn up in line on the port side of the quarterdeck, bring their rifles up in salute, while the bugle sounds a flourish and the drum a roll, two for an admiral, three for an ambassador and four for the President. The marines on a ship are collectively called the guard; the ceremony is called parading the guard. It takes place on the arrival or departure of any official of rank. If the official does not visit the ship it takes place when his flag passes by, and it also takes place when two ships of war pass each other. 106 THE SEA EOVERS The landsman visiting an American war- ship finds the marine everywhere in evidence. At the door of the captain's cabin stands a marine, doing duty as an orderly, and no one can enter that officer's presence until he has first taken in the name. Down below a marine guards the storage rooms, and up on the berth deck another stands sentry over the torpe- does, while still farther along on the same deck is the "sentry over the brig," for the brig, be it known, is the ship 's prison, where, in complete solitude and on a bread and water diet, an offender can meditate and see the error of his ways. Finally in the crowded forecastle the marine keeps order among the crew and an occasional eye on that fishing boat floating down with the tide, for Jack sometimes goes fishing and makes queer hauls. With a coin as a bait, he drops over his line, gets a nibble, hauls in a little brown bottle — and does not show his catch to the sentry. The marines, in a word, do the sentry duty of the ship, but this does not prevent these sea SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 107 soldiers and the sailors from getting on well together. Occasionally, a marine recruit, just assigned to a ship, will develop symptoms of a disease known as "duty struck," and blind- ly lay the foundation for years of unpop- ularity for himself by taking advantage of his authority to make it as warm as he can for the blue jackets, but such a recruit is quickly called to order by the older men of the guard. As a rule, the marines and blue jackets are on the most friendly terms, and there are few liberty parties of blue jackets bound for a good time ashore that are not accompanied by a favorite marine or two, invited along to help the sailormen dispose of their money, for, out of his $13 a month, the marine does not have a deal for shore use. The guard duty performed by marines on American ships is of an arduous and exacting kind. On some vessels, usually the smaller gunboats, the marine guard soldier is on post for two hours, and then gets only two hours off before buckling on his belt again, month in and month out. This sort of thing involves 108 THE SEA ROVERS a breaking up of sleep that tells severely on marines serving on small ships, and it is for this reason that sea soldiers are so partial to flagships, and exhaust all the means in their power to be assigned to such large vessels of war. However, on every warship, no matter what its size, there is at least one first-rate billet for the private marine ; that is the mail orderly's job. The mail orderly is the mes- senger between the ship and the shore, at- tends to all sorts of errands for officers and men, and is a general buyer of trinkets for all hands. A good deal of money passes through his hands, and his commissions are good, not to speak of the tips which are given to him for performing little diplomatic tasks ashore for the men forward. A marine mail orderly usually leaves the service at the expiration of a cruise with a snug sum tucked away. The first sergeant of a marine guard on a ship too small to rate one or more marine officers fills a responsible and exacting place, and is treated with great consideration by the officers, since, to all intents and purposes, he SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 109 is an officer himself. He may go ashore when he chooses without putting his name down on the liberty list, and when he comes back to the ship from shore leave, he is not searched for liquor, an immunity which he enjoys in common only with the ship 's chief master-at- arms. The first sergeant is responsible for the conduct of his men, and, if they do wrong, he is reproved much as if he were an officer. For the preservation of discipline, he is re- quired to hold himself aloof from the mem- bers of his guard as much as possible, and he associates and frequently messes with the ship's chief petty officers. Semper fidelis — always faithful — is the legend worn upon the flags, guidons and in- signia of the Marine Corps, and, in its hun- dred years of existence, it has never been false to its motto. It was one of the orderlies of the corps, Corporal Anthony, who, when the Maine was sinking, and nearly all who could do so were hastily leaving, made his way toward Captain Sigsbee's cabin, and, on meeting him, calmly gave the report the duty 110 THE SEA EOVEES of the occasion required of him. And this quiet performance of duty in the face of im- pending death, has had a hundred parallels in the history of the Marine Corps. During the bombardment of Tripoli, in 1803, and the desperate hand-to-hand fighting which occurred between the vessels on both sides, Decatur boarded one of the Tripolitan gunboats and engaged the captain in a duel with swords. One of the enemy coming up from behind was about to cleave Decatur's skull with his sword, when a marine inter- posed his arm. The arm saved Decatur, but it was severed to the skin. In the same bat- tle, Lieutenant Trippe, of the Vixen, boarded a Tripolitan gunboat and singled out the com- mander for a personal combat. A Turk aimed a blow at the lieutenant, but before he could strike, Sergeant Meredith, of the ma- rines, ran him through the body with his bayonet. It was also an officer of marines, Lieutenant O'Bannon, who, with Midshipman Mann, hauled down the Tripolitan ensign, after having stormed the principal defense SOLDIEES SERVING AFLOAT 111 of Derne, and planted the flag of the Republic on that ancient fortress. The marines participated gallantly in the War of 1812, and in the expedition against Quallah Battoo, a few years later, formed the van of the attacking party, and were in the thickest of the fight with the Malays. This Quallah Battoo expedition furnished a stir- ring passage for our naval history that is well worth recalling. In February, 1831, the American ship Friendship was loading on the coast of Sumatra. While the captain, two officers and four of the crew were on shore the Friendship was attacked by the crew of a Malay pepper boat, who, after killing the first officer and several of the seamen, suc- ceeded in cutting off the ship and plundering her of every article of value on board. The attack was clearly concerted, and the Achense rajah, Chute Dulah, received the spoils, re- fusing the restoration even of the ship. Time moved with leisure steps in those days, but as soon as news of this wanton out- rage reached the United States, prompt meas- 112 THE SEA ROVERS ures were taken to punish its authors. On February 5, 1832, the frigate Potomac, com- manded by Commodore John Downes, an- chored off Quallah Battoo and landed a force of 250 men to attack the town. The assault- ing party, composed mainly of marines, did its work in a thorough and practical manner. The town and the four forts defending it were captured and destroyed, and several hundred Malays killed, including the rajah chiefly con- cerned in the plunder of the Friendship and the massacre of its crew. The surviving ra- jahs begged for peace, and this was finally granted by Commodore Downes, but the les- son taught at the cannon's mouth is still re- membered on the Sumatran coast. The Marine Corps participated with bril- liant results in the Florida Indian War, and in the siege of Vera Cruz and the march to the City of Mexico their services were of the first order. In fact, General Scott is author- ity for the statement that at all times during the Mexican War they were placed where the hardest work was to be done. At the storm- SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 113 ing of Chapultepec, Major Levi "Twiggs, of the marines, led the assaulting party and was killed. This fortress having been cap- tured, the marines in General Quitman's di- vision moved directly on the City of Mexico, and were accorded the honor of first entering the palace and hoisting the American flag. The marines who accompanied Commodore Perry to Japan, in 1852, took an important part in that expedition. A force of a hun- dred marines was landed, and, together with a like number of soldiers and two brass bands, marched through Yeddo to the palace of the Mikado, creating a most favorable impression on the foreign officials. A similar display was made by Perry when he returned to Japan in 1854, to receive the answer of the Japanese Government to his representations previously made regarding the advantages of foreign trade. It was a force of marines who captured John Brown at Harper's Ferry, in 1859. While the militia of Virginia was assembling by the thousand to attack the little band of 114 THE SEA EOVEES abolitionists, a force of one hundred marines was sent from Washington, and a squad of eight of them battered down the door of John Brown's fort, and captured his party, to the chagrin of the hundreds of other military men near by who hoped to have a hand in the affair. Again and again during the Civil War the marines proved themselves brave and stub- born fighters. In the encounter between the Merrimac and the Cumberland, the marine division was under Lieutenant Charles Hey- wood, later commander of the corps. The first shot from the Merrimac killed nine ma- rines, yet the division was so little demoral- ized by the loss that it not only continued fighting, but actually fired the last shot dis- charged from the Cumberland at the Merri- mac. For services rendered between 1861 and 1865, thirty-seven officers and men of the Marine Corps received the thanks of Con- gress, medals or swords, and twenty-eight were brevetted for gallantry. In the brush with Corea in 1871, the ma- SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 115 rines, as before stated, were in the assault on the Salee forts, and Lieutenant McKee, in carrying the works, fell, as his father fell in Mexico, at the head of his men, and first in- side the stormed works. Commander, afterward Admiral, Kimberly stated in his report that to the marines be- longed the honor of " first landing and last leaving the shore. Chosen as the advance guard on account of their steadiness and dis- cipline, their whole behavior on the march and in the assault proved that the confidence in them had not been misplaced. ,, The marines again distinguished them- selves in 1885, when an insurrection in Pan- ama compelled the landing there of a force, which stayed until all danger was over, and several times, in more recent years, the offi- cers and men of the corps have plucked a fresh branch for their laurels. When the big railroad strike in California was in progress in the summer of 1894 the marine guard sta- tioned at the Mare Island Navy Yard was called out to serve with the regular troops at 116 THE SEA EOVEES Sacramento, Truckee, Stockton and other towns. In alertness, activity and general sol- dierliness they showed themselves quite the equals of the army troops, and the colonel of artillery who commanded the entire bri- gade, did not fail to dwell upon this fact in his report to the War Department. One of the marines at Truckee bent the stock of his rifle in clubbing a violent rioter, who after- ward was convicted as an accessory in ditch- ing a train and causing the deaths of four sol- diers. The marine was reproved by his com- pany commander, and narrowly escaped a court-martial, on the charge of destroying government property. " Bullets,' ' said the commander, "are cheaper than rifles." The American marine has never been known to show the white feather, no matter what the odds against him. When, some years ago, Antonio Ezeta, the Central Ameri- can agitator, was being chased by the govern- ment authorities of the Republic of Salvador, he took refuge in the residence of the Ameri- can consul at La Libertad. The populace SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 117 raged around the consulate, and word was sent to the garrison on the outskirts of La Libertad of Ezeta 's hiding-place. An Amer- ican gunboat was lying in the harbor, and the marine guard of twenty men, under command of a sergeant, was sent ashore by the com- manding officer at the request of the consul, to protect the latter 's residence and the ref- ugee within it, for Ezeta was a citizen of the United States. The marine guard reached the consulate at the same moment with a bat- talion of 250 Salvadorean soldiers. The ma- rines, not a whit dismayed, surrounded the consulate, and for eight hours stood off the swarthy Salvadoreans. Then, by a ruse, Ezeta, in disguise, was slipped to the beach and taken to the warship, which carried him to San Francisco to stand trial in the United States courts for violation of the neutrality laws. He would have been torn limb from limb by the citizens and soldiers of La Liber- tad, had it not been for the score of marines. The captain of one of the Salvadorean com- panies was an American free-lance from 118 THE SEA ROVERS Western New York. He raved over the cow- ardice of the dark skinned soldiers he com- manded, and profanely declared that, with half a dozen marines of the United States at his back, he would undertake to whip the en- tire Salvadorean army. His men, it may be stated in passing, did not understand English. Finally, in the war with Spain and the more recent operations in China, the Marine Corps added another moving and glorious chapter to its history. At Guantanamo the marine bat- talion, commanded by Colonel R. W. Hunting- don, fought the first serious land engagement of United States forces on foreign soil since the Mexican War. The fact that this bat- talion was attacked by the enemy in over- whelming numbers, and for over three days and nights was under constant fire, and that on the fourth day a portion of the battalion at- tacked and repulsed a superior force of Span- iards, shows, to quote the words of their chief, "that Colonel Huntingdon and his officers and men displayed great gallantry, and that all SOLDIERS SERVING AFLOAT 119 were well drilled and under the most effective discipline. ' ' One of the men under Hunting- don 's command was Sergeant Thomas Quick, a lithe and fearless native of the mountains of West Virginia. At a critical stage of the operations, while the marines were engaged with the enemy firing from ambush, it became necessary to dislodge them, and it was desired that the Dolphin should shell the woods in which they were concealed. Quick volunteered to signal her, and standing on a hill wig- wagged her, while bullets backed the dust about him. For his action, described as "beautiful" by his commander, he, in due time, received a medal of honor and a lieuten- ant's commission. The headquarters of the Marine Corps are at the barracks in the City of Washington, where are located the commandant and his staff. Besides those previously mentioned, there are marine barracks at Portsmouth, Boston, League Island, Norfolk and Annapo- lis. But the fouled anchor running through a hemisphere traced with the outlines of the 120 THE SEA EOVEKS two American continents, which adorns the front of the marine's fatigue cap, tells that he is at home both on sea and land, and when on either, shrewd, sharp blows are to be struck he is ready for them. Nowhere in the world, size taken into account, is there a more efficient organization than this corps of 6,000 brave fighting men. CHAPTER V THE POLICE OF THE COAST The revenue cutter, though perhaps the least known, is one of the most useful branches of the Federal service. Its crea- tion antedates by several years that of the navy, and it boasts a glorious history. It polices the coast as the navy polices the ocean, and its duties are as varied as they are weighty and important. It cruises constantly from the fever infected regions of the Gulf to the icebound shores of the Arctic Sea. It is the terror and constant menace of the smug- gler and poacher. It sees to it that the quar- antine is strictly maintained, and that the neutrality laws are not violated by the greedy and lawless of our own and other lands. It is prompt in the prevention of piracy, and 121 122 THE SEA ROVERS suppresses mutiny with a heavy hand. It looks after emigrant ships and enforces the license and registry statutes. Last, but not least, it gives timely succor to the shipwrecked and annually preserves hundreds of lives and millions of dollars' worth of property. And so, wherever one familiar with its his- tory falls in with its trim white cutters, whether in the sunny courses of the Gulf, or on the borders of the great Atlantic highway, off the bleak New England coast, in the crowded harbors of our lake ports, or in the still waters of the Pacific, he is sure to give them glad, respectful greeting, as modest, graceful emblems not alone of our country's greatness, but better still, of duty bravely and nobly done. The Revenue Cutter Service celebrated the centennial anniversary of its existence six- teen years ago, having been organized in 1790. The credit for its creation belongs to Alex- ander Hamilton, that great first Secretary of the Treasury, to whom we owe so much, and whose memory in these days of self-vaunting THE POLICE OF THE COAST 123 mediocrity we too often neglect to honor. His was a vision that saw clearly all the needs of the future, and as early as 1789 he earnestly advised the employment of " boats for the se- curity of the revenue against contraband. ' ' A little later he submitted to Congress a bill providing for a fleet of ten boats, to be thus distributed along the seaboard: Two for the Massachusetts and New Hampshire coast, one for Long Island Sound, one for New York, one for the waters of the Delaware Bay, two for the Chesapeake and its environs and one each for North Carolina, South Caro- lina and Georgia. Congress accepted the Sec- retary's recommendations, and in a few months ten swift cutters were built, armed and equipped, each vessel being manned by a crew of ten men. j Thus was born the Kevenue Cutter Service, a modest fleet of small, speedy vessels only a little larger than the yawls of the present time. In addition to their pay, the officers and crews received a part of the amounts derived from fines, penalties and forfeitures collected 124 THE SEA ROVERS in case of seizures and for breaches of the navigation and customs laws, but later the officers were given larger salaries and the payment of prize money abolished. At first only a small force was required to adequately protect the commerce of an extensive yet thin- ly populated coast, but our foreign trade grew so rapidly, and the importance of our ship- ping interests increased so steadily, that it soon became clear that a strong cordon of well equipped and speedy cruisers would be necessary for their effective protection. For this reason, Congress, in 1799, gave the Presi- dent authority to equip and maintain as many revenue cutters as he should deem necessary for the proper policing of our coast-line. And thus the Revenue Cutter Service grew in size and became more efficient with each passing year. During the first quarter cen- tury of its existence, it was almost constantly in the eyes of the public, and its daring deeds frequently afforded welcome material to the novelists of the period. Among its duties it was charged with the suppression of piracy, THE POLICE OF THE COAST 125 even so late as the opening of the last century, a serious menace to commerce; and it also waged a constant and relentless war against smugglers and smuggling. Those were the palmy days of the smuggler, who often made reckless hazard of his life in the illegal race for gain. Steam vessels had not yet come into use, and speed and safety then lay in trim lines and mighty spreads of canvas. Smugglers' schooners, sharp built, light of draught, and with enormous sails, were con- stantly hovering in the offing, biding some favorable opportunity to discharge cargoes upon which no duty had been paid. It was the business of the Revenue Cutter Service to keep watch upon these vultures of the sea, spoiling them of their quarry, and in this way sprang up hand-to-hand encoun- ters both by sea and land, sudden, sharp and terrible, in which many a gallant life was lost and fame and honor won. Now, however, the pirate and the smuggler, at least of the bold life-risking sort, have passed to the limbo of forgotten things, and the officers and 126 THE SEA ROVERS men of the Revenue Cutter Service no longer win glory and a reputation for bullet-chasing courage in their suppression. The new field which they have built up for themselves, is daring and full of danger, but it has not the same interest for the general public, and so their deeds of heroism are now performed in out-of-the-way corners, with no herald present to trumpet them to the world, and with the pleasant consciousness of duty well done as their only reward. The Revenue Cutter Service in time of war has always co-operated promptly and effect- ively with the navy against the foe. Indeed, the cutters belonging to the Revenue Cutter Service have taken a gallant and active part in all the wars of the United States save one. In 1797, when war with France threatened, the Revenue Cutter Service was placed on a war footing, and by its promptness and vigi- lance, did much to uphold the dignity and prestige of the Federal Government. In the following year a number of cutters cruised with diligence and daring in West Indian THE POLICE OF THE COAST 127 waters, and the record of the Revenue Cutter Service in guarding the seaboard and pre- venting the departure of unauthorized mer- chant ships, while the embargo act of 1807 was in force, was also a fine one. Its services during the War of 1812 were as varied as they were brilliant. Not only did its vessels successfully essay perilous mis- sions, but they also took a gallant part in many of the most hotly contested naval ac- tions of the war. In fact, to the cutter Jeffer- son and its gallant crew belong the credit for the first marine capture of that contest, for within a week of the proclamation of war tlie Jefferson fell in with and captured the British schooner Patriot, with a valuable cargo, while on her way from Guadeloupe to Halifax. And this proved only a fitting prelude to a hundred illustrious deeds performed by the officers and crews of the Revenue Cutter Service during the following three years. In the second year of the war the revenue cut- ter Vigilance overhauled and after a sharp engagement captured the British privateer 128 THE SEA ROVERS Dart, off Newport, while the cutters Madison and Gallatin carried many rich prizes into the ports of Charleston and Savannah. "When in 1832 South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union, several cutters cruised off the Carolina coast, ready to assert by force the supremacy of the Federal Govern- ment. During the Seminole War revenue cut- ters were not only actively engaged in trans- porting troops and munitions, but were also of great service in protecting the settlements along the Florida coast. During the Mexi- can War eight revenue cutters formed a part of the naval squadron operating against the southern republic and participated gallantly in the assault on Alvarado and Tobasco, while the revenue cutters McLane and Forward contributed materially to the success of Com- modore Perry's expedition against Tobasco and Frontera in October, 1846. Finally, a volume would be required to ade- quately record the work of the Revenue Cut- ter Service during the Civil War. Its cut- ters were employed as despatch boats, joined AN OFFICER IN THE REVENUE CUTTER SERVICE THE POLICE OF THE COAST 129 in the pursuit of blockade runners, did guard and scouting duty, and often shared in en- gagements with Confederate batteries and vessels. In truth, it was a revenue cutter, the Harriet Lane, which, in Charleston Har- bor, in April, 1861, fired on the Union side, the first shot of the Civil War. The Harriet Lane was long the pride of the Eevenue Cut- ter Service, and had a notable career. Named after the beautiful and gracious niece of Pres- ident Buchanan, she participated in the naval expedition to Paraguay, and during the Civil War was often under fire. Again, during the war with Spain, the Revenue Cutter Serv- ice achieved an enviable and heroic record. The proper patrol of our long coast line re- quires a large number of vessels, and the Rev- enue Cutter Service at the present time has a complement of thirty-seven vessels, all splendidly adapted to the work in hand. Dur- ing the last sixty years steamers have slowly but steadily replaced the top-sail schooners of the old days, and the vessels now employed by the Revenue Cutter Service are, with one 130 THE SEA ROVERS or two exceptions, small, compact, well-built steamers, which, save for the guns they carry, might easily be mistaken for swift steam yachts. In size they range from 130 to 500 tons burden. The majority of them have been built under the direct supervision of offi- cers of the service and are perfectly adapted to the varying wants of the several stations. Nearly all of them are armed with from two to four breech-loading rifled cannon and carry small arms for the use of their crews. Most of the vessels bear the names of former sec- retaries and assistant secretaries of the Treasury, but the Andrew Johnson, the Will- iam H. Seward and U. S. Grant are also among the names to be found on the list. The U. S. Grant, which does duty at Port Town- send, is a bark-rigged steam propeller, and a model of its size and type. Strange to say, it is the only ship of the United States that bears the name of the greatest captain of his age. The vessels of the Revenue Cutter Service are always reacly for instant duty in the most THE POLICE OF THE COAST 1 31 distant quarters. When, in 1867, Alaska be- came a part of the United States, within a week after the ratification of the treaty, the revenue cutter Lincoln was steaming north- ward, and was the first to obtain accurate in- formation regarding the geography, re- sources and climate of our new possession. Three or more revenue cutters now cruise every year in Alaskan waters, guarding the seal fisheries and often giving much needed relief to the whaling fleet that yearly sails from San Francisco for a cruise in the waters above the Behring Sea. Officers and crews of the cutters doing serv- ice in the waters of Alaska have remarkable stories to tell, and the log-books of the cut- ters Corwin and Bear have been filled during the last twenty-five years with a record all too brief, of many thrilling adventures in the frozen North. The Corwin left San Fran- cisco for the Polar Sea in May, 1881, charged with ascertaining, if possible, the fate of two missing whalers, and to establish communica- tion with the exploring steamer Jeanette. 132 THE SEA EOVERS Five times during the previous year the Cor- win had attempted to reach Herald Island, and failed each time. On this voyage better success attended, and after braving the perils of the drift ice, a landing was made, while at the same time the bleak coast of Wrangel Land was sighted to the westward. On Au- gust 12, 1881, the Corwin having pushed its way through great masses of floating and grounded ice, into an open space near the island, effected a landing on Wrangel Land, this being the first time that white men had ever succeeded in reaching that remote cor- ner of the Arctic waste. The cruises of the Corwin in 1880 and 1881 covered over 12,000 miles, and the officers and crew, while carefully preventing illegal raids upon the sealing interests, also found time to prosecute important surveys and sound- ings, to make a careful study of the natives of Alaska, and to collect a great mass of im- portant data relative to the natural features and mineral wealth of the country. The cruises of the Corwin in the succeeding years THE POLICE OF THE COAST 133 of 1882, 1883, 1884 and 1885, were of scarcely less importance. One of these cruises was to St. Lawrence Bay, Siberia, where timely suc- cor was given to the officers and crew of the burned naval relief steamer Kogers, which had gone north in the spring of 1881 in search of the Jeanette. During the Corwin 's cruise in 1883 a considerable portion of the interior of Alaska was carefully explored and an out- break among the natives on the mainland promptly quelled. During its two succeed- ing cruises the Corwin saved from death nearly 100 shipwrecked whalers and destitute miners. Since 1885 the cutter Bear has patrolled the Alaskan waters, making a record equal to that of its predecessor. Its work in protect- ing the sealing fisheries is well known, and it has also suppressed in large measure the il- legal sale to the natives of firearms and spirits. Its record as a life saver is also a long one, and some of its experiences have been more thrilling than those to be found in the pages of any romance. 134 THE SEA ROVERS When the Bear reached Alaskan waters in 1887 the captain of the whaling ship Hun- ter handed its commander a most remark- able message, which had been delivered to him a few days before by the natives of Cape Behring. This message consisted of a piece of wood, on one side of which was rudely carved: "1887 J. B. V. Bk. Nap. Tobacco give," and on the other "S. W. C. Nav. M 10 help come." The riddle offered by the message was speedily solved by the officers of the Bear. The bark Napoleon had been wrecked in 1885 off Cape Navarin, and only fourteen of the crew of thirty-six men had been rescued. Of the unlucky twenty-two a few reached the Si- berian shore, but nothing had been heard of their subsequent fate. The officers of the Bear reasoned that the sender of the message was a member of the Napoleon's crew who had found refuge with the natives to the southwest of Cape Navarin and was now anx- iously awaiting rescue. This reasoning proved correct, and a few weeks later the THE POLICE OF THE COAST 135 weary two years' exile of James B. Vincent, of Edgartown, Mass., boatswain of the Na- poleon, had a happy termination. The story Vincent told his rescuers, was of tragic and absorbing interest. The Napo- leon, caught in a storm, had been wedged in the ice and its crew compelled to take to the boats. The boats, four in number, were soon separated, and thirty-six days of fearful suf- fering passed before the one containing Vin- cent and his companions reached shore. In the meantime nine of the eighteen men in the boat had died and several others had been driven insane by their sufferings. Vincent was the only one who could walk when they reached land. Five more soon died and three of the survivors were helpless from frost bites and exhaustion when they fell in with a party of natives. A portion of the latter lived in- land, and these took Vincent with them when they returned to their homes. The following Spring when the natives visited the shore to fish, Vincent found his three shipmates barely alive, and they died soon after. 136 THE SEA KOVERS When the fishing was over Vincent went back to the mountains with his new-found friends, and during the following winter carved and entrusted to wandering natives from Cape Behring the message which later brought about his rescue. When spring of the second year opened Vincent, with the na- tives, again started for the seashore to fish. Great was his joy a few weeks later when he was attracted by the shouting of the natives and looked up to see a white man and to find himself rescued at last. The Bear conveyed him to San Francisco, whence he made his way to his home in Massachusetts. While among the Eskimo, Vincent was kindly cared for by an old native, whose wife received him as her son. After a year the husband died, but his last instructions to his wife were to care for and keep their guest until he was rescued. When relief at last came the old woman with tears in her eyes, said that she was ready to die, for she had done as her husband wished. Warm and ten- THE POLICE OF THE COAST 137 der hearts can be found even in Siberian wastes. The Revenue Cutter Service is part of the Treasury Department, and comes under the direct jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Treasury. Subordinate to him are a chief and assistant chief of division. Each ves- sel of the service patrols the district to which it is assigned, and forms a picket line at the outer edge of government jurisdiction, which extends four leagues from the coast. Every vessel arriving in United States waters is boarded and examined, and its papers certi- fied. If a vessel liable to seizure or exam- ination does not bring to when requested to do so, the commander of a cutter, after dis- charging a warning gun, has authority to fire into such a vessel, and all acting under his orders are indemnified from any penalties or action from damages. On each cutter there are a captain, three lieutenants, a cadet, an engineer and two assistants, and a crew of a dozen or more men. The service includes in its several grades 138 THE SEA EOVEES about one thousand men. Strict discipline is maintained, and its crews receive constant instruction and exercise in the use of great guns, rifles, carbines, pistols, cutlasses and the like. An officer of the Revenue Cutter Serv- ice must not only possess considerable execu- tive ability, but must also be a man of varied and accurate information, having a knowl- edge of gunnery and military drills, and be thoroughly familiar with the customs and navigation laws of the country. Rank is obtained by promotion, the latter being governed by written competitive exam- inations, from three to five of the senior offi- cers of a lower grade being selected for any vacancy occurring in the higher grade. A young man wishing to join the service as an officer undergoes a rigid examination held an- nually at Washington, and then serves for several years aboard the revenue schoolship, where he learns sea mathematics, sea law and seamanship. His period of apprenticeship ended, he joins a regular cutter as a junior THE POLICE OF THE COAST 139 officer and waits for promotion at a salary of $85 per month. Life on board a revenue cutter during the months of summer is usually an easy and pleasant one, but in the winter there is an- other and different story to tell. From De- cember to April of each year the cutters cruise constantly on their stations to give aid to vessels in distress, and are, in most cases, forbidden to put into port unless under stress of weather or other unforeseen conditions arise. Few stormy winter days pass without the revenue cutter seeing a signal from some ves- sel in distress, and aid is never sought in vain. The cutter steers straight for the signal as soon as it is sighted, and when a quarter of a mile distant lowers a boat. Often a boat is launched into a sea where death seems cer- tain, but officers and men never shrink from their duty. When the boat gains the side of the vessel seeking aid, the master whom misfortune has overtaken, requests, as a rule, to be towed into port. When such a request 140 THE SEA KOVERS is made, a line must be got to the distressed vessel and from the boat to the cutter, a task often performed with infinite difficulty and at the risk of life and limb. When a vessel is found drifting helplessly and about to dash itself upon rocks, the peril is even greater. Then the cutter must stand further away, and its boat is in constant dan- ger of being dashed upon the rocks. But, thanks to the skill, experience and coolness of the officers and crew of the cutter, a line is generally got into the boat and to the steamer, and the imperilled vessel hauled away to safety. One of the finest feats of life-saving ever performed by the Eevenue Cutter Service was that credited to the cutter Dexter, some years ago. On January 17, 1884, the iron-built steamer City of Columbus left Boston for the port of Savannah, carrying eighty-one pas- sengers and a ship's company of forty-five persons. Her commander was a capable and experienced seaman, and though by nightfall the wind, which had been blowing all day, had THE POLICE OF THE COAST 141 increased to a hurricane, and a heavy sea was running, he had no serious apprehension of danger. The vessel, following her usual course through Vineyard Sound, had left behind nearly all the dangerous points which thickly bestrew those waters, and would soon be safely in the open ocean. It was at that luck- less moment that the captain left the bridge and went below, first directing the helmsman how to steer. Within an hour the steamer struck on Devil's Bridge, and an awful fate was upon the hapless passengers and crew, who were sleeping soundly, all unconscious of danger. The weather was bitter cold, the darkness in- tense, the wind blowing a hurricane and the waves rolling mountain high. In the twink- ling of an eye a hundred poor creatures were swept to their death in the icy waters. A few of the stronger ones took refuge in the rigging, but many of these, benumbed by the cold, dropped one by one from their supports and disappeared in the sea, while such 142 THE SEA ROVERS boats as were cleared away were either dashed to pieces or instantly swamped. The wreck occurred about four o'clock in the morning, and soon after daylight the Dex- ter reached the scene of the disaster. Her commander at once dispatched two boats to the rescue of those still clinging to the rig- ging of the Columbus, and thirteen men, jumping from their refuge into the sea, were picked up as they came to the surface, and conveyed to the Dexter. To reach the wreck in small boats through an angry sea was an undertaking so perilous as to make even the boldest pause, and called for cour- age of the highest order. However, the Dex- ter J s crew proved equal to the test, and Lieutenant John U. Rhodes made himself famous by an act of the noblest heroism. Two men, rendered helpless by cold and exposure, still clung to the rigging of the Columbus after all their companions had been taken off. To board the ill-fated vessel was impossible ; Rhodes essayed to reach it by swimming. He gained the side of the vessel after a gallant THE POLICE OF THE COAST 143 battle with the waves, but was struck by a piece of floating timber, and had to abandon the attempt. Bruised and half fainting, he insisted upon making another trial, reached the vessel and brought away the two men, both of whom died a few hours later. The Legislature of Connecticut, Rhodes' native State, passed a resolution thanking him for his gallant conduct, and he received many medals and testimonials. Rhodes has since died, but the Revenue Cutter Service still numbers among its offi- cers scores of men endowed with the flawless bravery of which he gave such shining proof at the wreck of the City of Columbus. One of these is Lieutenant James H. Scott. This brilliant young officer — I cite his case as a typical one — was born in Pennsylvania thirty- seven years ago, and while still in his teens shipped as a boy on a merchant vessel in commerce between Philadelphia and Ant- werp. Tiring of this trade, he sailed as an able seaman from New York to Bombay and other East Indian ports, making the last voy- 144 THE SEA ROVERS age as boatswain of the good ship Ridgeway, after which, declining proffer of a second mate's berth, he entered the Revenue Cutter Service as a cadet. Graduated in 1890, and made acting third lieutenant on the cutter Woodbury, it was then that young Scott, who while attached to the revenue schoolship had jumped over- board in Lisbon harbor and rescued the quar- termaster of his vessel, again gave proof of the sterling stuff that was in him. On a cold, clear day in January, 1891, the Woodbury, which is stationed at Portland, Me., was cruis- ing to the eastward of that port, the ther- mometer below zero, and the rigging covered with ice. The Woodbury was about half-way over her cruising ground when the officer of the deck discovered a large three-masted schooner hard aground on a ledge of rocks which stood well out from the shore. A high sea was running at the time, though the cut- ter rose and fell to every wave with apparent unconcern, and breaking clean over the schooner, the crew of which had taken refuge THE POLICE OF THE COAST 145 on the rocks and were now frantically sig- nalling for help. It was clear that unless help reached them they would quickly perish from the cold. Captain Fengar, commanding the Wood- bury, ran in as close as he could without peril to his vessel, and carefully surveyed the ground before giving an order. His practiced eye told him in a moment that to send in a boat of the cutter type would mean its cer- tain destruction against the rocks, even if it could live in the sea then running. However, the captain suddenly recalled that a fisher- man's village was only a few miles distant, and that there he could obtain a couple of dories admirably adapted to the task in hand. Shouting to the men on the rocks to hold on and not lose hope, the cutter, at a word from its commander, headed about, and went plung- ing and rolling at top speed in the direction of the village. Two hours later the Wood- bury was again on the scene, with a good-sized dory on one of her davits. Closing in on the wreck, Captain Fengar 146 THE SEA BOVERS called for volunteers. Almost to a man the crew responded, but among the foremost were Cadets Scott and W. S. Van Cott. Captain Fengar allowed the two young men to go, but not without some misgivings. Both insisted on pulling oars, the dory being in charge of Lieutenant W. L. Howland, an experienced and capable officer. As the dory left the ship it was observed that a life-saving crew from a station well down the coast was approaching. It would never do to let the Woodbury be beaten, and her dory crew pulled with all the vim they could command. The race was to be a close one, but at the outset the Woodbury's boat gained the lead, and such a run, in such a sea, was never perhaps pulled by opposing boats. Lieutenant Howland in getting close in, dared not run up too close to the rocks, and after a couple of ineffectual attempts to heave a line was about to despair of success, when suddenly Cadet (now Lieutenant) Scott, se- curing the line around his waist, sprang over- board, before any one in the boat knew what THE POLICE OF THE COAST 147 he was about. Shouting to Lieutenant How- land to pay the line out, young Scott was dashed upon the rocks and seized by the im- prisoned sailors. The brave young fellow was badly stunned, but he had gained his point by getting the line to the rocks. Com- munication was now effected with the dory, which all this time was riding the seas at a safe distance. Another line was hauled up from the boat, and one by one the sailors jumped clear of the rocks and were hauled to the dory, whence they were conveyed with- out delay to the deck of the cutter. When rescued they had been fourteen hours on the rock. Since the incident just related, Lieu- tenant Scott, though still one of its youngest officers, has held every position in the Reve- nue Cutter Service. The present chief of the Revenue Cutter Service is Captain C. F. Shoemaker. He has climbed to this position from the lowest rung of the ladder, and is a man whose success would have been notable in almost any call- ing. Many of the other captains of the serv- 148 THE SEA EOVERS ice are men of mark and achievement, for the Government has no nobler, better, braver servants than those who officer and man its revenue cutters. CHAPTER VI THE OCEAN PILOT The ocean pilots and deep sea divers of New York have one thing in common; both object to taking apprentices, and in the case of the former, at least, there is good reason for this, since they have been, for generations, the aristocrats of their calling. The pilots who sail out of Sandy Hook are no hardier than their rugged and fearless fellows of the North Sea, but they subject themselves to greater dangers by their long cruises, and rough, indeed, must be the weather that can keep them in port. They cruise night and day, in search of incoming craft; their torches ' flare lights up the snow and sleet of winter storms and contends with the darkness of summer fogs; and they speak and board 149 150 THE SEA ROVERS in all sorts of weather and at all seasons the fleet liners that cross the western ocean in less than a week. And these pilots of the New York and New Jersey shores are a revelation to the tourist, who, having never heard of them, sees them for the first time. The lat- ter, in most cases, expects to watch a rough- and-ready sort of fellow in homespun, with a swaggering air and a boisterous manner, climb from the pilot's yawl up the black hull's towering side. Instead, he sees a man of modest and pleasing address, about whom there is little to indicate his calling, and much that bespeaks the merchant or clerk one meets of a morning on lower Broadway. There was a time when our pilots indulged in the luxury of a high silk hat when boarding ves- sels in sunny weather, but they are not so fastidious nowadays, and use derbies instead. Prosperous as a class, the pilots of New York pay dearly for their prosperity by the most arduous sea labor. Since 1853 more than thirty-five boats have been sunk and wrecked in various ways, and twice that num- THE OCEAN PILOT 151 ber of pilots have lost their lives. There are at the present time upward of 160 pilots cruis- ing from the port of New York. They are subject to the supervision of a pilots' commis- sion of five members, named by the Governor of New York, and each pilot is appointed after a long and severe apprenticeship. He must first serve, boy and man, before the mast until he masters every problem in the man- agement of every form of rig. Then he must contrive to obtain the position of boat-keeper or pilot's mate. In that capacity he must serve three full years before he can be ad- mitted for his examination for a license. After this he must pass a most rigid examina- tion on all points of seamanship and naviga- tion before the Board of Pilot Commissioners, and show complete and exact knowledge of the tides, rips and sands and all other phe- nomena for many miles out from the piers of the East and North Eivers. But even after the candidate has received his license, he is sometimes forced to wait years, until some pilot happens to die and » 152 THE SEA EOVEES leave a vacancy for him. The first year of pilotage he is granted a license to pilot ves- sels drawing less than sixteen feet. If he gives satisfaction, the following year he is permitted to take charge of vessels drawing eighteen feet. If he passes a satisfactory examination the third year, he then receives a full license, entitling him to pilot vessels of any draught, and is then first called a branch or full pilot. On receiving his license, the pilot must give bonds for the proper dis- charge of his duty, and he is liable to heavy fines if he declines to fill a vacancy or board a vessel making signals for a pilot. Pilots are paid for their work by the foot, the charges varying according to the draught. For a ship drawing from twenty-one to twenty- eight feet they receive $4.88 a foot, and for one drawing six to thirteen and one-half feet $2.78 a foot, these rates being slightly in- creased in winter. A cruise on a New York pilot-boat, however brief, is an experience sure to be remembered. When a pilot-boat starts out on a hunt for THE OCEAN PILOT 153 ships, it is decided in what order its half- dozen pilots shall take the prizes, and the man who is to board the first one is placed in command. The other pilots, meanwhile, take their ease as best suits their taste, the seaman 's work being done by a crew of sailors hired for the purpose. One pilot, however, is always on the lookout for sails, and a lands- man is compelled to marvel at the certainty with which these ocean scouts discharge the task of sighting vessels, for often they are able to tell the name of a steamship before unaccustomed eyes can discern aught but a waste of waters and a wide expanse of sky. Still, a part of this skill may be due to the fact that pilots are always posted before go- ing out as to what vessels are expected, and from what direction they are coming, the watch being made all the keener by the fact that the bigger the ship the bigger is the pilot's pay. A ship, moreover, must take a pilot going out from the same boat that fur- nishes the pilot going into port, while if a cap- tain refuses a pilot he must pay full pilotage, 154 THE SEA BOVEKS and thus contribute his tithe to the support of the system. This latter rule seems, at first glance, a curious provision, but it is defend- ed on the ground that without it the business would not be remunerative enough for really competent men to engage in it, and that with unskilled pilots the annual losses would be greatly in excess of what they are at present. When a ship is sighted by daylight, a long blue burgee is hoisted to the peak of the pilot- boat, which means, "Do you want a pilot?" If there is no responsive signal, it is taken for granted that the answer is "Yes," but if a jack is hoisted the watchers know that the vessel has already been boarded by a pilot from some boat that has sailed farther away from port in the hunt for a ship. When a ship is sighted at night she is signalled by means of a torch charged with benzine and giving forth an intense light. Seen from the other vessel the effect is startling, the white light illuminating every sail and spar of the pilot-boat, so that it stands out, its number THE OCEAN PILOT 155 clearly visible upon the mainsail, a gray spec- ter against the night's background. Should the answering signal be favorable, there follows a scene of great excitement on the deck of the pilot-boat. At first sight of the ship, the pilot due to take the prize dives down to the cabin, sheds his working clothes and dons a suit of sober black, and by the time it is known he is wanted, he is ready to be transferred to his charge. Taking on a pilot is not without its perils. The yawl nearly always pitches and tumbles in most uncomfortable fashion, while the ship is rarely if ever brought to a full stop, and the pilot, watching his chance, must grasp the rope ladder let down its side, and scramble aboard as best he can. Sometimes he gets a ducking, and if the weather is tempestuous he is pretty certain to be drenched, but for that he cares not a jot, and he is sure to show a smiling face to captain and passengers when finally he sets foot on deck. Dropping a pilot from an outgoing vessel is often more hazard- ous, especially in stormy weather, than his 156 THE SEA ROVERS transfer the other way. Then he must de- scend the rope ladder and jump for the boat in the nick of time, for to miscalculate in the least the position of the little shell means a ducking almost certainly, and possibly a watery grave. A peril, however, more feared by pilots than the one I have been describing, is the dreaded lee shore ; and with reason, as a story told by a veteran ocean pathfinder will show. On a still afternoon in midsummer the crew of a pilot-boat sighted a ship off Fire Island, some five miles away. In the dead calm pre- vailing the only way to board her was to row over the distance. There would be lit- tle danger in doing this if the wind did not spring up and the ship sail away, so the yawl was lowered and headed for the distant mer- chantman. But as night was closing in, and ere the yawl had come within hailing distance of the ship, of a sudden the breeze sprang up, and the vessel making sail, glided slowly over the horizon line. The breeze grew into a gale, and in the gathering storm and gloom PILOT SIGNALING A VESSEL THE OCEAN PILOT 157 the man could no longer discern the where- abouts of the pilot-boat. Nor, there being no compass on board the yawl, could they deter- mine the direction in which they were being blown. The nearest land was miles away and the only thing that could be done was to keep the boat's head to the wind and wait. Thus the minutes lengthened into hours. To- ward dawn, when the night was darkest, they heard the thunder of surf on the reefs, and a little later felt the yawl lifted up on the crest of a mighty breaker rushing swiftly toward the land. There was a deafening roar, a crash, a whirl, and a torrent of foam. In a twinkling the boat was capsized and the poor fellows were struggling in the surf. One struck a rock and was killed, The others, freed from the receding wave, ran up the beach, and by digging their hands into the sand to escape the deadly undertow, finally got ashore, drenched and exhausted. In the main, however, the system I have been describing has now become a thing of the past. Potent causes have contributed to 158 THE SEA ROVERS this result. Formerly pilot-boats had no par- ticular stations assigned to them, and boats have been known to cruise as far north as Sable Island, a distance of six hundred miles, in order to get steamers taking the northern courses. In the same way pilot-boats cruised long distances to the southward and straight out to sea to meet the incoming steamers and sailing vessels. Thus, unrestrained in its movements and left to seek out its own salva- tion, each boat sought to outdo the other in securing work, and all sorts of strategic de- vices were brought into play in order to first gain the side of an incoming vessel. Pilots took advantage of fog and night in order to slip by a rival, while jockeying for winds and position was indulged in to an extent that would be counted extraordinary in a yacht race. Competition, however, cut down earnings to such an extent that there came a time when many of the boats were no longer able to pay expenses. Then it was that some of the long- headed among the pilots, casting about for a THE OCEAN PILOT 159 remedy for this evil, came to the conclusion that one steam pilot-boat would be able to do the work of three or four sailboats. It was accordingly decided some years ago that steamboats should gradually replace the ex- isting fleet of sail. With this innovation came restrictions regulating the cruising grounds of the boats. Instead of cruising about indis- criminately as formerly, each boat is now as- signed a certain beat. An imaginary arc has been described extending from Barnegat to Fire Island, a distance of seventy-five miles, and all pilot boats are expected to confine themselves within this line. Four pilot-boats patrol this line, each covering a beat of about nineteen miles. Inside of the circle are sta- tioned two more pilot-boats, while still further in is a boat known as the inner pilot-boat. Just off the bar another boat is stationed to receive the pilots dropped by outward-bound vessels. When a boat in the outer circle be- comes unmanned or disabled, a boat from the inner circle takes its place, while a reserve boat occupies the beat left vacant on the in- 160 THE SEA EOVERS ner circle. In this way all the beats are con- stantly patrolled in an efficient and economi- cal way. Each pilot takes his turn at the service, and is on board a boat cruising on the stations three days in seven, a moving contrast to the offshore service of other years, when a boat and crew were frequently compelled to remain at sea for weeks at a time. Indeed, under the new system of pilotage, battles with cross-seas and gales and ex- posures to snow, cold and sleet, while cruising for vessels hundreds of miles off coast, are fast becoming things of the past, and for stories of collisions, wrecks, narrow escapes and strange mishaps, one must now hark back to the records of former days. Here, how- ever, he is sure to encounter many a tale that quickens the pulse and stirs the blood. Take the case of the Columbia, run down by the steamship Alaska, off Fire Island. When the Alaska was sighted, the pilot-boat was head- reaching to the north on the port tack. The wind was blowing a gale from the northwest, THE OCEAN PILOT 161 and an ugly sea was running, with the weather clear, but cold. She plunged deeply into the heavy sea, and heeled to the force of the wind until her lee rail was awash. The wind whipped off the top of the waves and filled the air with spray. When the steamship sighted the boat off Fire Island, her course was changed to make a lee for the boat 's yawl. She seemed to stop when the yawl was launched and two men and a pilot went over the side of the boat and dropped into her, but ere the yawl had fairly started on her way the liner, of a sudden, and without warning, forged ahead. The surge from the port bow of the Alaska, as she pitched into a big wave, capsized the boat, and threw the men into the water. Before anything could be done to save them the bows of the steamship rose and fell again, and, hitting the pilot-boat, cut it in two and crushed the decks and beams to bits, the broken timbers being swept under the bows and along the sides as the steamship again forged ahead and passed over the spot. Not a man on the Columbia was saved. 162 THE SEA ROVERS The Sandy Hook pilot, however, never quails in the face of danger or even death, as was proved at the stranding of the packet boat, John Minturn, almost within a stone's throw of the New Jersey beach during a frightful hurricane in February, 1846. There were fifty-one souls on board the Minturn, and of that number only thirteen escaped to tell the story of that fearful night. Its hero, according to the evidences of all, was Pilot Thomas Freeborn, who to the very last strug- gled manfully to succor the hapless women and children who clung to the deck around him. It was bitter cold, and every wave that washed over the stranded ship left its coat- ing of ice on deck, rigging, passengers and crew. Freeborn and brave Captain Stark, who was forced to see his wife and children freeze to death without being able to render them assistance, gave up their own clothing in a vain attempt to protect the weaker suffer- ers, and when days afterward the pilot's body was found washed up on the beach it was almost naked, while that of a woman, which THE OCEAN PILOT 163 lay near-by, was carefully wrapped in his pea-jacket. It has been three-score years since the wreck of the Minturn, but in every year since then there has been numbered among the members of the Sandy Hook Pilot's Asso- ciation scores of hardy men, who, should need come to them, stood ready to risk their lives and die as bravely as did Thomas Freeborn. Pilot Henry Devere proved that he had the same heroic fiber in his makeup when he sailed in the James Funck, before the Civil War. A brig under shortened sails was sighted one day, and when the yawl of the pilot-boat drew alongside, Devere hailed a boy at the wheel. The boy seemed to be stu- pefied, and the pilot was obliged to hail him several times before he started up, leaned for- ward into the companionway, and called feebly to somebody below. Then a gaunt man came on deck and said that the crew had been stricken by fever. Most people in the face of a menace of this sort would have turned back, but Devere was not that kind of 164 THE SEA ROVERS man. Instead, he went on board, and, with the help of the mate, headed the vessel toward Sandy Hook. The captain was ill in his state- room. The body of a dead sailor found on deck was tied in mosquito netting and dropped overboard. The boy died in the lower bay, and the captain off the Battery, leaving the mate as the sole survivor of the crew. The pilot helped to furl the sails and make the lines fast, and only left the stricken vessel when she had reached her moorings. The stranding of the Jesse Carll in 1889, il- lustrates another of the dangers with which pilots sometimes have to contend. The boat, having discharged one of her five pilots, was standing off shore near Fire Island, when she began to feel the force of an advancing south- ern cyclone, and early in the evening was in what sailors call " nasty weather.' ' At mid- night a violent thunder-storm burst overhead, and the increasing wind raised a furious sea, but Pilot Gideon Mapes, in charge of the ves- sel, had her under double-reefed sails, and standing up against the wind and waves in THE OCEAN PILOT 165 fine shape. Then came a deluge of rain, and the wind increased to hurricane force. Soon a thick mist covered the water and shut out everything in sight. The boat reached off and on, expecting to keep out of shoal water, but all efforts failed. Her signals of dis- tress were seen by the life-saving crew on the beach, and before daylight the ten men on board were taken ashore in boats. When morning came an effort was made to pull the boat off, but as she shifted into deeper water she filled, a hole having been made in her bot- tom. Then the pilots abandoned her, but she was raised and repaired a few weeks later. Stories like these are what the pilots tell in their idle hours. Searching for them at such a time, one is most likely to find them at the Pilots' Club, a flourishing social or- ganization, which has roomy quarters just under the roof of a big office building within hailing distance of the Battery. Here at all hours of the day a score or more of pilots are sure to be sitting about spinning yarns, play- ing cards and checkers and reading the news- 166 THE SEA ROVERS papers and magazines. Their well-furnished clubrooms contain a great number of pre- cious curios — relics from all quarters of the globe. There are firearms of curious antique pattern; autograph letters by such famous sea-dogs as Macdonough and Porter; a tiny chest of drawers carved from one of the tim- bers of John Paul Jones' ship, the Bon Homme Richard; a portrait of Washington by Stuart, surrounded by two large Ameri- can flags, and a model of the pilot-boat Sting- aree, which was built in 1810, and was one of the most famous crafts of her day. This model shows that the years have wrought great changes in the building and rigging of pilot-boats. In o]d times the boats simply carried mainsail, foresail, and fore- staysail and jib. They had no foretopmast. and on their maintopmast carried a flying gaff-topsail, which was hoisted from the deck. Now the boats have both fore and maintop- masts, and each carries a mainsail, foresail, forestaysail, jib, jib-topsail, maintopsail and staysail and fore and main standing-gaff top- THE OCEAN PILOT 167 sails, which give them an immense spread of sail, compared with that used by the boats of earlier times. A schooner-rigged pilot-boat costs from $15,000 to $16,000. That was about the cost of the Caldwell H. Colt, a good ex- ample of the typical pilot-boat. She is eighty- five feet long with twenty-one feet beam, 61.43 tons, custom-house register, and a rig as trim and jaunty as that of an ordinary yacht. The pride, however, at present writing, of the New York Sandy Hook fleet is the New York, built of steel, propelled by steam, and able to stand as much buffeting in cyclonic seas as the stanchest of the liners. She was built on the Delaware from designs by A. Cary Smith, is 155 feet long, 28 feet beam, 19 feet 7 inches deep, and is driven by a compound surface- condensing engine of 100 horse-power. Her pole masts are of steel, and she spreads on them enough canvas to steady her. The New York has accommodations for twenty-four pilots, who fare more luxuriously than they ever did on any of the old sailing craft. They have a smoking-room in a separate steel deck- 168 THE SEA ROVERS house, aft of the engine-room, fitted up like a similar room on an ocean steamship, while the lifeboats in which they leave the New York to board incoming vessels are hoisted and lowered by a steam derrick in less than a min- ute. It is intended that in a few years the entire fleet shall be made up of vessels equal if not superior to the New York. CHAPTER Vn THE DEEP-SEA DIVER There is something about the occupation of the diver that strongly appeals to the imagi- nation, and with reason, for working fathoms below the surface of the water, in semi-dark- ness, dependent upon a rickety pump for the breath of life, his trade is at best a perilous and precarious ones. Perhaps, that is why divers as a class are opposed to taking ap- prentices, and that a majority of the men who drift into the calling do so by accident. Most divers, if you question them, will tell you that the best, if not the only way to acquire their art is to put on a diving suit, go down into the depths, and learn the business for yourself. That was what a diver who was preparing 170 THE SEA ROVERS for work in the East River said to me, and, fitting the action to the word, I asked him to loan me his suit, and permit me to try my 'prentice hand at the business. He protested goodnaturedly, but finally yielding, brought out his suit, and helped me to put it on. The outfit in which I speedily found myself ac- coutred, consists of two suits, one within the other, and both of india-rubber. The stock- ings, trousers and shirt are all made together as one garment, which the wearer enters at the neck, feet first. The hands are left bare, the wristbands of the rubber shirtsleeves tightly compressing the wrists. There is a copper breastplate, bearing upon its outer convex surface small screws adjusted to holes in the neck of the shirt, which by means of nuts fastened upon the screws, is held so securely in place as to render the entire dress from the neck downward abso- lutely air and water-tight. Fitting with equal closeness to the breastplate is a helmet, com- pletely inclosing the head and supplied with three glasses, one in front and one on each THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 171 side, to enable the diver to look in any di- rection. Finally, for his feet there is a pair of very thick leather shoes, made to lace up the front, and supplied with heavy leaden soles to prevent him from turning feet upper- most in the water. When, with my friend's aid, I had donned this curious-looking dress, he placed across my shoulders ropes sustaining two leaden weights, one hanging at my breast and the other at my back. Sometimes in very strong currents it is necessary to make the weights which the diver carries extraordinarily heavy. Such was the case with those hanging over my shoulders on the occasion of my first dive. While the diving dress I wore weighed of itself nearly two hundred pounds, yet, much to my surprise, when once below the surface, I did not find the burden I sustained in wear- ing it any more than I did that of my ordinary clothing when out of the water. It also seemed marvelous to me, after daylight had swiftly merged into the twilight of the depths, that though I was several fathoms under 172 THE SEA EOVERS water my breathing was free and uncon- strained, for an air-pump worked by two men supplies the diver with air, which passes into his helmet through a hose at the back. Near the place of its entrance is a spring valve for its escape. This can be controlled by the diver, but he usually sets it before going into the water and seldom disturbs it afterward, since the pressure of the air being greater than that of the water a surplus of the former readily escapes. When the valve proves insufficient to per- mit the escape of all the dead air the diver can open in his breast-plate a similar spring valve intended only for such an emergency. He can also regulate the amount of air pumped to him by signals on the air-hose to the men engaged in pumping,* one pull meaning more and two pulls less air. These signals by means of the air-hose are generally used by all divers, but each diver has also his own private code of signals upon the life-line, which is always fastened to his waist, and by which he is drawn up out of the water. These THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 173 signals each diver writes down very carefully and gives to the man in charge of the life- line. By means of these he can, without com- ing to the surface, send for tools, material or anything needed for the work he has in hand. When a lengthy communication is to be made the diver often sends up for a slate and writes what he wishes to say. Old divers declare that it is just as easy to read and write under the water as it is out of it, all objects being greatly magnified. The only unpleasant sensation of my stay below was a slight drumming in the ears — walking under the water I found an easy mat- ter — and when hauled to the surface I de- clared my first attempt at diving a wholly suc- cessful one. However, the man whose suit I had borrowed, smiled at my enthusiasm, and declared with something akin to contempt that there was a good deal of difference be- tween deep-sea diving and grubbing about the East Eiver for a lost anchor. I learned be- fore we parted that he was a deep-sea diver forced for the moment to accept whatever task 174 THE SEA EOVERS came to hand, but there was truth in what he said ; and I am also convinced, after talks with a dozen members of his fraternity, that nei- ther a single descent nor even many descents into the depths, can give one an adequate idea of the weird strangeness of a diver's life. That can come only from the cumulative ex- perience of a lifetime. Almost all the submarine work on the At- lantic coast is done by divers living in New York or Boston. There are about as many skilled divers in Boston as New York — per- haps twenty in each city. The pay of a skilled diver is five dollars a day of four hours or less. In that time a man may descend half a dozen times, or he may descend once and stay four hours, but be his period of labor long or short, it counts as a day. If at the end of four hours he descends again that de- scent counts as another day's labor. The diver's assistant receives three dollars. He is a skilled man, whose business it is to man- age the life-line and the hose, and who some- times becomes a diver. The pumpers, who THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 175 run the pump that keeps the diver supplied with air, are each paid two dollars a day. They are not skilled workmen and seldom de- velop into divers. Probably a third of the New York divers do not work for wages. These are men who own their outfits and prefer to work by the job. Some of the self -employing divers enjoy good incomes from their labors. As a rule, a diver of this class goes down, looks at a sunken vessel, and then states what he will charge to raise her. Diver Victor Hinston was paid $150 a day for locating the sunken steamship City of Chester, and Captain An- thony Williams, having raised the schooner Dauntless in two' days, received $750 for his time and trouble. The same diver, having repaired with iron plates and raised in four days the steamer Meredith, ashore near Jere- mie, in Hayti, demanded and was paid $7,500 for his work. The divers of New York live much as other citizens of the metropolis. A majority of them are native Americans, with homes, wives and children. They are, of 176 THE SEA EOVEES course, absent from home a great deal and on short notice, for divers from New York are not only sent all over the eastern coast of the continent, but even to the Great Lakes and the interior rivers, most of their work lying beyond the city. Abram Onderdonk, when he died not long ago, was the oldest deep-sea diver in this country. During forty of the nearly seventy years of his life he was continuously engaged in the pursuit of his calling, and it carried him to nearly every part of the globe. Captain Abe, as his friends called him, counted the swordfish as the gravest danger members of his craft have to fear. This fish, which has a short bony sword almost as strong as steel, protruding from its head, speeds along through the water, charg- ing dead ahead and never veering from its course for anything save a rocky ledge or the iron hull of a steamship. If it strikes a wooden craft, its sword seldom fails to cut clean through the vessel 's side. Should a man be attacked by it certain death awaits THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 177 him. Diver Onderdonk himself never en- countered but one of these creatures, and that was a young one whose sword had not yet hardened. He was at work on the deck of a sunken vessel, when he saw the fish coming from a distance, and heading straight toward him. He took a tighter grip upon the ax which he held in his hand, and made ready for attack, but, to his surprise and relief, the fish, never swerving from its course, glided past him out of his guard's range, and a mo- ment later disappeared. Captain Abe often encountered sharks under water, but declared that, as a rule, there is little to be feared from them. A former mate of his named March, however, once had an ugly experience with these creatures. The diver in question was at work in a wreck which had been loaded with live cattle. When she had been at the bottom for a month or so the cattle became light and began rising to the surface. The locality was infested with sharks, which quickly gathered round the hatchway, seizing the carcasses as they came 178 THE SEA EOVERS out and following them to the surface. Some of the cattle had been tied, and these floating out to their ropes ' end, were torn to pieces by the sharks, which soon began to fight among themselves, with the diver an unwilling wit- ness to their struggles. March, hesitating to ascend for fear he might be attacked, and afraid to remain below lest the snap of a shark's mouth should sever his air hose, in the end gave the signal to be hauled up, and the next instant was jerked into and through the school of sharks. He came out of the water maimed for life, as in his upward pass- age a shark snapped at him and took off his right hand, thus rendering him incapable of further service as a diver. Another of Captain Abe's old mates, Mc- Gavern by name, while at work in New Zea- land waters, had an equally harrowing, al- though fortunately less harmful, encounter with that most formidable of all marine mon- sters, the devil fish. The diver was laying some wharf-blocks when suddenly surprised by his uncanny foe. Despite his struggles — THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 179 and he was a giant in statnre and strength — the monster quickly and completely overpow- ered him. He was locked in the tremendous claws of the devil fish, and fastened helpless against a submerged spile. McGavern real- ized his peril, and kept quiet until his assail- ant, whose arms measured nearly nine feet, loosened his hold. Then he signalled to be drawn up, and came to the surface with the writhing creature still clinging to his back. Captain Abe served before the mast in his youth, and I find that, other things being equal, sailors make the best divers of all. Their former experience is apt to render them cool and quick-witted in the presence of danger, and their knowledge of a ship's rig- ging and construction proves of untold value to them in their work. To his training as a sailor Captain Charles Smith, a well-known Boston diver, probably owed his truly mar- velous escape from death when overtaken by accident while at work on the sunken hull of the Clara Post, in the harbor of Bridgeport, Conn., a few years ago. The wreck lay six- 180 THE SEA KOVERS teen fathoms deep, and when Captain Smith descended to examine it, he found that the masts had gone by the board, and that the deck had been torn off by the waves, while the cross timbers strewed with the wreckage, hung over the decks and into the hold. Cap- tain Smith began to cut them away, when suddenly the tangled mass shifted and fell part way in the hold, catching him with it and prisoning him as in a vise. The diver could not see far in the deep water in which he was at work, and finding himself pinned in, how he could not tell, he pulled the life-line three times — the signal that his life was in peril. He felt himself rising a few feet; then all the wreckage fell in upon him, pinning him more securely than before. Worse still, when he tried to free himself, he found that the air-pipe had encountered some unseen ob- struction, and that to attempt to move about would shut off his supply of air. The peril was one that made each moment seem like eternity. Meanwhile the diver's assistants were try- A DIVER READY TO DESCEND THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 181 ing to discover what had happened to him. It seemed to them that the signal to hanl np had been instantly followed by one to lower, and then by one to stop. The men at the life-line, confused at these apparently contra- dictory commands, ordered the derrick to haul on the blocks. Nothing yielded to the strain, and the men at the pumps labored until they were exhausted, and had to give way to others, but still no signs of release. A new danger now threatened the imprisoned man. In catching hold of some iron bolts he had cut a small hole in the valve of one of his rub- ber gloves, and water, filling the glove, was slowly oozing past the clamps at the wrist, and creeping up the arm. It seemed to the helpless diver, held fast in the tide-swept mass, that he would soon be strangled or crushed to death. Confused by the great air pressure in his helmet, he had about con- cluded that his end had come, when — unlooked for relief — the wreckage gave a lurch, and he found that he could climb up to one of the deck timbers. He grasped his ax, and was 182 THE SEA KOVERS hewing desperately for freedom, when sud- denly the whole mass broke away, and began to rise rapidly, carrying the diver, now head downward, with it. His queer ascent did not consume more than ten seconds, but it was long enough for him to live over in memory all the events of a lifetime of two-score years. At first his comrades failed to discover him in the mass of tangled material, and their sur- prise can be imagined when he shot up through the wreckage, feet first. Captain Smith described this as his closest call to death's door, "and" he added, "I have peeped through the keyhole pretty often. 9 ' Captain Smith's adventure reminded a brother diver, in whose presence it was told, of a narrow escape of his own. It occurred while he was putting some copper on the bot- tom of a steamer in dock. ' ' I took some plate down with me," he said, "and worked for a while on one side of the hull, after which I started in to put some plates on the other side. The vessel was about three feet off the bot- tom, and I crawled underneath, dragging the THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 183 plates behind me. After I had been at work for an hour or so I noticed that my air was getting short, but when I tried to get under the keel again to be hauled up, I found the steamer on the bottom and squeezing my air- hose between its keel and the ground. The tide was ebbing and the hull had gradually sunk until it was almost aground. I had for- gotten all about the tide, and when I pulled the hose it refused to move an inch. If the bottom had been soft it would not have mat- tered so much, but it was rock, and the hose was gripped like a vise. There was nothing to do but wait; if she fell any lower the air would be entirely shut off and I would have to die. Not till my last hour shall I forget the torture of those few minutes while I waited to see whether it rose or fell. My head felt as though it was bursting, and my nose and ears were bleeding. I took heart, how- ever, when the air began to freshen, for I knew then that the tide had turned, and that the hull was rising. There was plenty of time for me to recover my nerve before it was 184 THE SEA EOVEES high enough off the bottom for me to crawl under, but I did not get* it back. Instead, I stood there shaking like one stricken with palsy until I could squeeze under the bottom and give the signal to be hauled up. I reached the surface in a half -fainting condition, and was sick for weeks afterward. When I did recover it was with hearing permanently impaired.' ' Diving in the Great Lakes is attended with even greater perils than those I have just been describing. In Lake Huron, opposite the entrance of Thunder Bay, a large buoy marks the spot where, nearly twenty-five fathoms deep, lies the wreck of a once famous lake vessel, which sank while sixty of its pas- sengers were still in their berths, not one of whom evermore made sign. The steamer took down with it when it sank not only that precious human freight, but $300,000 in gold coin and five hundred tons of copper. The sunken steamer was the Pewabic. Bound down the lakes from Copper Island, then the richest known deposit of pure copper in the THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 185 world, it collided with the steamer Meteor, bound up the lakes, and sank almost instantly. Diving apparatus was at that time some- what crude upon the lakes, and the great depth of water in which the Pewabic went down made it out of the question to attempt to raise it or to recover any of its valuable cargo. Twenty-five years after the wreck the sunken vessel was located by means of grap- pling irons, and a Toledo diver ventured to go down and inspect it. He was hauled up dead. In spite of his fate, two other divers, tempted by the price offered, went down at different times. Neither survived the ven- ture, and until 1892 nothing further was done toward recovering the wealth tying in the wrecked Pewabic. Then a noted diver, Oliver Peliky by name, who had with apparatus of his own devising done safer work in deeper water than any other diver on the lakes had ever been able to withstand, announced his willingness to go down to the wreck. He was taken to the spot, the wreck was located by grapples and Peliky went down. He was 186 THE SEA ROVERS below twenty minutes and then signalled to be drawn up. When he reached the surface he said he had experienced no great incon- venience, had gone into the wreck, and was enthusiastic in his belief that he could do the work that was necessary to recover the cargo. He went down again, and for a quarter of an hour answered every signal. Then he failed to respond. The men on the tender pulled on the life-line. It had plainly caught on some obstruction. The crew, believing that Peliky was dead, backed the steamer. The jerk loosened the life-line. They hauled the diver to the surface^ His armor was opened, as if burst by some great force. The diver r of course, was dead. Since then, though handsome inducements have been held out to various divers, no further attempt has been made to recover the treasure that has lain for more than a generation in the Pewabic's hold. One of the divers with whom I have talked told me that somehow diving took the life out of a man, and that he had never known a diver who did much smiling. "I have an im- THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 187 pression myself/ ' he added, "that I shall go down one of these days without coming up again.' ' In truth, before my wanderings among them were ended, I came to the con- clusion that divers, as a class, are taciturn, grave, sober-faced men, but I also found that the calling they follow has its humorous as well as its serious side, although too often the humor has a dash of the grewsome to it, as was the case with a diver who went down to work on the steamship Viscaya, sunk in a collision off Barnegat Light. It was a diffi- cult job, so two divers were sent down — one of them to remain on deck in sixty feet of water, to act as second tender to the other diver who went below. The latter had been at work but a few minutes when three jerks came over the life-line. He was so unnerved when hauled up to the deck that he forgot that he was still in sixty feet of water, and sig- nalled to have his helmet removed. When both divers had been hauled to the surface, he said that while he was working through a gangway, he had seen two huge objects com- 188 THE SEA BOVERS ing toward him; and nothing could dissuade him from the belief that he had encountered two submarine ghosts — until the other diver went down and discovered that there was a mirror at the end of the gangway, and that the diver had seen the reflection of his own legs, vastly enlarged, coming toward him. The veteran from whom I had this story told me also of the amusing mistake made by a diver, who, much against his will, had been sent down to recover a body from a wreck. Some divers have an ineradicable dread of the dead, and never handle them when they can possible avoid it. He was one of this kind, and the water being very thick, he went grop- ing gingerly about in the cabin. After a lengthy search he found a body, and fasten- ing a line around it, gave the signal to haul it up. When he followed and took off his hel- met a large hog lay on the deck. He had tied the line around it, thinking it was the body he was looking for. After that he was always called the ' ' pork ' ' diver. His former comrades have likewise many amusing stories THE DEEP-SEA DIVEE 189 to relate of a diver of other days, Tom Brint- ley by name, who, though a competent man and a good fellow, was a little too fond of stimulants. On one occasion he went down while in his cups, and the men above not knowing his condition, became seriously alarmed when several hours passed by with- out their receiving any signals from him or any response to those they made to him. An- other diver, sent down to look for him, found him lying on his back at the bottom of the ocean, sixty feet below the surface, fast asleep ! The bed of the ocean would seem to most people an exceedingly strange place in which to take a nap, but divers live in a world of their own— a world of which their fellows know little or nothing, yet abounding at every turn with curious, beautiful, and indeed, al- most incredible sights. Sometimes, especially in tropical waters, the bottom of the sea is a lovely spectacle, and divers grow enthusi- astic when they describe its forests of kelp and seaweed gently waving in the tide, which 190 THE SEA KOVERS look like fairyland, in dim light, and the bright-colored fish making them all the more beautiful. Along the coast of the Island of Margueretta, and in many parts of the Car- ibbean Sea, there are submarine scenes of surpassing beauty. Often the bed of the ocean is as smooth and firm as a house floor, and the water as transparent as crystal, while the white sandy bottom acts as a reflector to the bright sunshine above the surface. In some places there are widespreading pastures of stumpy, scrubby marine vegetation, a growth not unlike seaweed, and of a bluish gray tinge. There are also clumps of fan- shaped fungi, of a spongy consistency, which when dried in the sun are exceedingly beau- tiful. But the most wonderful growths in these gardens of Neptune are the long kelp tubas, resembling our fresh-water pond-lilies, only of much larger size. Their stems are tough and hollow, and put forth pretty blos- soms on the surface, although their roots are in the bed of the ocean, many fathoms below. In the West Indies and the Spanish Main THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 191 the water is so clear and transparent that the bottom is visible at a depth of from sixty to a hundred feet below the surface, and the scope of the diver's vision is seldom less than an eighth of a mile. In Northern seas, how- ever, especially in the harbors of towns and cities, the water is so discolored and murky that nothing can be seen at about twenty feet from the surface, a disadvantage which calls for the exercise of the gift of which all divers are most boastful — their delicacy of touch. Indeed, most frequently the diver must do his work under water by means of touch only, and when one considers the varied tasks he is called upon to perform, pipe laying, build- ing, drilling holes in rocks and charging them with dynamite in darkness, looking for treas- ure, recovering dead bodies and sunken car- goes, or inspecting all parts of a wrecked ves- sel, buried in water a hundred feet deep, it is not to be wondered at that he should be proud of any special skill in this direction with which nature and practice have favored him. With some, this delicacy of touch ber 192 THE SEA KOVERS comes in time almost a sixth sense. Diver C. P. Everett, of New York, is one of these. Fonr or five years ago, he laid a submarine timber foundation of twenty-eight feet long 12 x 12 yellow pine, handling it alone. First, the pieces were weighted to sink; and then Everett went down and weighted them for handling, for without weights they would, of course, have immediately risen to the surface. Only a strong man can become or, at least, long remain a successful diver. No one is fit for the calling who suffers from headache, neuralgia, deafness, palpitation of the heart, intemperance, or a languid circulation. The pressure of the atmosphere increases the lower one descends, until a point is reached where life could not be maintained. The greatest depth, perhaps, ever reached, was 201 feet, with an atmosphere pressure of 87 pounds to the square inch. A diver named Green worked in 145 feet in Lake Ontario, but he was paralyzed, and never did a day's work afterward. Most divers do not care to work much deeper than 120 feet, and even for THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 193 30 or 40 feet, a moderate depth, considerable nerve and practice are requisite. The lower the depth, the more acute the pains felt in the ears and about the eyes, and symptoms of paralysis become more pronounced. An asth- matic man, on the other hand, may be cured by diving, the constant supply of fresh air, and the pressure which drives the blood so rapidly opening up the lungs. Divers as a rule cannot stand close rooms, being so ac- customed to a copious supply of fresh air that they must have plenty of it, even when they are above water. In diving, the supply of air is increased according to the depth. At thirty feet below the surface fifteen pounds of air to the square inch is used, at sixty feet thirty pounds, and so on. Still, much de- pends on the man, and some divers work in eighty feet of water with only forty-five pounds. In the laying of masonry under the water and other work of the kind, the diving dress is usually replaced by the diving bell. This is a large vessel full of air, but open at the 194 THE SEA BOVERS bottom, fresh air being pumped into it by air pumps. It is furnished with seats, and a chain passes through the center, by which weights can be raised or lowered. The div- ing bell has this advantage over the dress, that several men can work in company; on the other hand, should an accident happen, more lives are involved. Some years ago the chain of a diving bell in use at a pier in Dover, England, got fouled in some way and its occupants found themselves in a most alarming predicament. However, a diver named William Wharlow, donning his suit, descended, crowbar in hand, and after several hours of hard work, succeeded in freeing the chain, when the diving bell was hauled up in safety. It was stated a little while ago that some divers have an ineradicable dread of the dead ; many will not have anything to do with them, when they come upon them by accident they will be unnerved and useless for the rest of the day, and those who make a virtue of necessity, when on a wreck generally insist THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 195 upon getting the bodies out first. The tem- perature of the water always tells the diver where to look for bodies in a wreck; if it is cold they will be on the floor or lying in the berths; if warm they rise to the ceiling or against the bottom of the berth above. The diver who raised the tugboat Bronx from the East River found the fireman sit- ting in a chair in the fire-room, staring into a wave-quenched furnace, with the weird, life- like expression often seen in the wide-open eyes of the drowned, and which those who have encountered it declare never fails to strain the nerves of the strongest man. Other divers relate even more grewsome experi- ences. When the diver, employed to locate and examine the steamship City of Chester, entered the steerage, the first object that met his gaze was the figure of a man standing upright, entangled in a pile of ropes. The face was terribly distorted and the tongue, protruding, hung from the mouth, while the body was swollen to twice its natural size. Going a little further aft he found another 196 THE SEA ROVERS victim of the wreck, who had fallen on his knees and grasped a third man around the waist. The spectacle so affected him that he signaled to be hauled to the surface, where he reported what he had seen, and refused to again go below until accompanied by an- other diver. Captain Abram Onderdonk, already re- ferred to, once brought up a dozen bodies from the wreck of the steamer Albatross, sunk in the Caribbean Sea. Some of these were in their staterooms, and the last corpse was that of a young woman. He found her in the bed lying on her side, her eyes wide open and staring straight ahead. One of her arms was thrust through the bed slats, with the hand clutching the berth frame. As he loosened her grasp the body turned, then floated to an almost erect position, and leaned over toward him with a repelling look. The expression of the face and eyes, as well as the attitude, almost unmanned him, but in a mo- ment he regained his nerve, clasped her about the waist and brought her to the surface. The THE DEEP-SEA DIVER 197 same diver was employed to bring the dead from the wrecked Sound steamer Stonington. Groping about one of the staterooms, for he had to feel his way in the darkness, his hand came in contact with a corpse, which he took and carried to the surface. It proved to be a woman, and clasped to her bosom so firmly that no effort could separate them, was a beautiful babe. Perfect peace and rest were on their faces, and they had evidently died in sleep. Mother and child were buried as they were found — together. CHAPTER Vin THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER Hekoes, also, are the men who build and tend our lighthouses, and there are few finer stories than that which tells of the erection of Tillamook Rock lighthouse, probably the most exposed structure in the world. Tilla- mook is a basaltic rock, rising abruptly from the deep waters of the Pacific a mile off the Oregon coast, and eighteen miles south of the mouth of the Columbia River. Projecting to seaward, it receives the full force of the storm- iest waves of the Pacific, which often break with appalling violence on its summit, ninety feet above the level of the sea, boats being able to reach it only when the sea is calm. Four workmen in October, 1879, were landed on the rock with their tools, fuel, pro- 198 THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 199 visions, a stove, and canvas for a tent. They were in a few days joined by five others, who brought with them a small derrick. The fore- man of the party lost his life in attempting to land, and the lot of the survivors was one of great discomfort and constant danger. To prevent being blown or washed away, they tied the canvas to ring-bolts driven into holes drilled in the rocks, and then quarried out a nook in which they built a shanty, which they also bolted to the rocks. Next a flight of steps was quarried up the steep side of the cliff, and the work of cutting down and level- ing the summit began. The weather often compelled a suspension of work for days at a time, and in January came a tornado which lasted for nearly a week. During this storm the shanty of the workmen was repeatedly flooded with water and their supplies were swept into the sea. They were able at the end of a fortnight to make those on the mainland acquainted with their condition, and fresh supplies were passed to them over a line cast from the rocks 200 THE SEA EOVERS to the deck of a schooner, which had come as near as safety would permit. When May, 1880, came, the dome of the rock had been cut down to a height of eighty-eight feet from the surface of the sea, and a spot leveled for the lighthouse. A small engine and more derricks were now landed, and with them came three masons, who in June laid the corner-stone of the lighthouse. The stones were made ready for laying on the mainland, and a fresh supply conveyed to the rock whenever the weather would permit. First, a square, one-story house for the keep- ers was built, and above this was raised a tower forty-eight feet high, raising the light 136 feet above the sea level. Sixteen months after work was begun the lamp was lighted for the first time, and has since prevented scores of wrecks. Over the beacon raised amid such difficulties, three keepers stand sen- tinel, and their lot is an exciting as well as a lonely one. A few winters ago a terrific storm broke upon the rock, and the water poured in torrents through the holes cut in THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 201 the dome of the lighthouse to give ventilation to the lamps. Stout wire screen shutters pro- tected the lantern and broke the force of the water hurled against the glass. But for this it would have been battered in, and the heavy plates might have killed the man attending the lamps. Tillamook is known in the service and to mariners as a light of the first class, since lighthouses are roughly divided into three classes: First, those on outlying headlands and deep-sea rocks, the distinguishing fea- tures of a country's coastline, and the first to give the mariner warning of his nearness to land. The second grade of lights show him his way through the secondary shoals and rocks, and the third grade, or harbor lights, take him safely into port. There are fifty- two first-class lights on the coasts of the United States. New Jersey and Massachu- setts have each a double light; and Florida, by reason of the treacherous reefs which girt its coast, has as many first-class lights as any other two States put together. 202 THE SEA ROVERS A majority of the lights of the first-class are housed in tall stone or brick towers, and a number of them stand upon very high ground. The light on Cape Mendocino glows from an eminence of 423 feet above the level of the sea, and is visible for twenty-eight miles. There are ten other lights whose ele- vation averages from 204 to 360 feet above sea level, and which are visible from twenty- one to twenty-six miles. The light at St. Au- gustine, Fla., is a fine example of its class. The strong and massive tower of brick rises 150 feet from the ground, and the light is reached by winding stairs. The apparatus for the light is twelve feet high and six feet through, and the lenses alone cost thousands of dollars. A powerful lamp in the centre of the apparatus sends its rays in all directions, the lenses being arranged at such angles as to gather the light and to send it out in par- allel rays in the course desired. The cost of the St. Augustine lighthouse was $100,000. Each lighthouse must have peculiarities of its own, so that both by night and by day the THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 203 mariner can distinguish it from its neighbors, and thus guard against the mistakes that might otherwise prove fatal. The first re- sult desired is accomplished by the use of fixed, revolving, blended, flash and intermit- tent lights, and as the timing of the second and the two latter classes is capable of great variety, it will be seen that the elasticity of the system is ample to meet all possible needs. To secure the second result desired the light- houses are painted in different colors, and the application of the colors is varied in each in- stance. Some retain their natural colors, while others are painted black and white, or red and white; here broad horizontal bands alternating, and there slender spiral ones set- ting off the background of a sharply contrast- ing color. Again, the shape of the houses is varied, some being circular and others cone- shaped, some tall and others short, some square and others octagonal, while in many cases the shape and color of the keeper's dwelling nearby also help to make distinction easy. Thus the character of the light guides 204 THE SEA ROVERS the sailor by night, and by day the form and color of the lighthouse give him welcome knowledge of his whereabouts. The first lighthouses in this country were beacons, made by piling up stones, from the summit of which "firebales of pitch and ocum" were burned in iron baskets at night. It is a far cry from that time to this, and the construction of the lighthouse of the present day is, as has already been shown, a task de- manding mechanical skill and engineering ability of the first order. A lighthouse on the mainland has few difficulties involved in its construction, but where the foundation is an isolated rock, a submerged reef, or a sandy shoal, the best resources of the engineer and mechanic are called into full play. The lighthouse most difficult to build is that on the submerged rock or partly submerged rock. Race Rock Light, in Long Island Sound, belongs to this class. Portions of Race Rock are three and others thirteen feet under wa- ter. Diving-bells were used to level the foun- dations for the lighthouse, and the masonry THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 205 and concrete under water were laid in the same way. The United States has two other lighthouses built on submerged rocks, Minot's Ledge in Boston harbor, and Spectacle Reef, on Lake Huron. The first lighthouse on Minot's Ledge was built above stout iron rods driven into the rocks. In April, 1851, there was a severe gale which lasted five days. On the third night of the storm the house was blown down and light and keeper went out together. Four years later a second structure was be- gun, this time with a foundation of masonry and concrete. Minot's is barely awash with the lowest tide, and so rare were the oppor- tunities for work that three years were re- quired to prepare the rock for the first course of stone, which was laid in 1857. In 1860 the structure was completed and has ever since stood proof against wind and storm. Spectacle Reef lighthouse, near Mackinac, was bui]t with the aid of a coffer-dam. A large wooden cylinder was constructed by banding long staves tightly together and towed out to the rock, where it was set up on 206 THE SEA EOVEES the surface and the stones driven down into the uneven places. Then the crevices were filled with cement and the water pumped out. After this the rock was leveled and the lime- stone courses rapidly raised one above an- other. Spectacle Keef light stands eleven miles from land, and its base is seven feet un- der water. Where there is a shifting shoal, whose un- stable character no degree of mechanical or engineering skill can overcome, resort is had to the lightship. The United States has twenty-five of these vessels. Seven of them are employed off Massachusetts Bay to mark the Vineyard and Nantucket shoals, and a line of equal number lies along Long Island Sound stretching from Brenton's Eeef to Sandy Hook. Four more are stationed off the New Jersey and Delaware coasts, one off Cape Charles, three off North Carolina, South Caro- lina and Georgia, and two off Louisiana and Texas. The life of a lightship crew, as will be told in another place, is a laborious and often a dangerous one. THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 207 The United States is divided into sixteen lighthouse districts, each one with its inspec- tor and engineer. The former, drawn from the navy, inspects the lights under his juris- diction at least every three months ; the latter, a member of the Corps of Engineers, superin- tends the building, removal or renovation of the towers. Both are responsible to the Lighthouse Board, a body appointed by the President and composed of veteran naval offi- cers of high rank, who are no longer fitted for active duty at sea. The station of the third lighthouse district is on Staten Island, between St. George and Tompkinsville. Here over a hundred men are constantly employed and half a million dollars annually expended. From this sta- tion one hundred and eighty-nine lighthouses and beacon lights and seven lightships are maintained and supplied, while thirty-six day or unlighted beacons, thirteen steam fog sig- nals, six electric light buoys, and five hundred and seven other buoys are looked after and 208 THE SEA EOVEES kept in repair by the inspector and his assistants. Fog often obscures the rays of the most powerful light, and it is then that the fog signal and the whistling buoy come into play. The most effective fog signal is the American siren, a steam machine worked under seventy pounds pressure, and from which a series of noises come forth that can be heard from two to four miles. Certain intervals in the sounds designate the nearest light and afford a wel- come and often much-needed guide to the mar- iner enveloped in a cloak of fog. This sys- tem of fog signals extends along the entire seaboard, extra precautions being taken on the Northern Atlantic coast. Mineral oil is the principal illuminant used in our lighthouses. It is selected with the greatest care, and is subjected to three sev- eral tests before being accepted. Gas has been tried as a lighthouse illuminant, but with inferior success, and there are at the present time only three lighthouses in which it is used. Experiments with electricity have also been THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 209 only fairly successful, its light blinding in- stead of giving aid to the pilot. The light- house station on Staten Island is a busy place, and much work is done there, but the wheels of industry are so well oiled and run so smoothly, that a deep peace seems always to brood over the establishment. Day after day and year after year the work, mov- ing in well-marked channels, goes on with quiet and certainty. Everywhere the neat- ness and order prevail that mark all depart- ments of the lighthouse service. Indeed, in no branch of the government service is stricter discipline and closer atten- tion to duty insisted upon than is demanded from the brave and devoted men who tend our lighthouses. The pay of these keepers ranges from $1,000 to $100, the average, by an Act of Congress passed some years ago, being $600. The Lighthouse Board, which controls the service, selects as keepers the best men obtainable, preference being always given to men who have served for lengthy periods in the army and navy. 210 THE SEA ROVERS Members of this class Know what discipline means, and hard experience has taught them that orders are to be obeyed to the letter. Many an old veteran, whose scars tell of val- iant service in the Civil War or on the West- ern frontier, and many an old shipmaster or mate, whose weather-beaten face bespeaks long years spent on the quarter-deck, as light- house keepers now do duty on solitary and barren beacon rocks, where for months at a time, aside from their own voices and those of their families, the roar and moan of the ocean, as it beats against the breakers below, are the only sounds that are heard. The life of the keeper — though many who follow it seem wholly contented with it, and doubtless would not leave it for any other calling — is thus a lonely and arduous one. Two breaches of the rules which govern the keeper's conduct bring as a penalty immediate dismissal from the service. The absence of a light for a single moment may bring dis- aster to life and property on the seas, and neither excuse nor previous good conduct can THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 211 save from instant dismissal the keeper who allows his light to go out. He may plead that his wife or child was dying, but he is told that he must subordinate his light to nothing. And he must not only keep his light burning, but stay by it so long as the lighthouse stands. Some years ago an ice pack lifted from its foundations, overturned and carried away the Sharp 's Island lighthouse in Chesapeake Bay. The two keepers had a staunch boat and could have made their way to shore. Instead, they bravely chose to remain at their post of duty, and for sixteen hours, without food or fire, drifted with the wreck at the mercy of the ice cakes. When the wreck finally grounded the keepers carried ashore all the movable portions of the light, the oil, and everything else they could take with them. At the same time the keepers of another light, fearing danger, left their post and went ashore. They pleaded that the ice had ren- dered the light useless for the time being, but this excuse had no weight with their supe- riors. They had proven recreant to their trust 212 THE SEA ROVERS and were dismissed from the service, the places they had filled being given to the two keepers who had refused to leave their post of duty, even when to remain seemed certain death. Drunkenness, when detected, also leads to removal from the service. That and allowing one \s light to go out are the two un- pardonable sins in the eyes of the lighthouse inspector. Aside from his duties at night, the keeper finds plenty of work to do. Promptly at a given hour in the morning the lights must be extinguished; and during the day all put in order for the coming night. In the lantern room the lenses must be kept free from speck or tarnish, and the reflectors, the brass rail- ings and the gun metal carefully burnished and polished to the last degree of brightness. The oil tanks must also be filled and the wick trimmed. Carelessness or negligence in any of these particulars is dangerous, for the . visits of the inspectors are always unan- nounced, and may occur at any moment. Most important of all, the lamp must be THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 213 lighted on time, for a delay of even a few minutes will not escape notice. Each keeper is required to record the time the lights ap- pear in the stations within his range, and tardiness in this particular is noted by watchful eyes, and at once reported. At in- accessible stations, as a rule, from three to four keepers are employed. In stormy months, when communication with the mainland is im- possible, one or more of the keepers may die or be disabled, and experience has taught that, to insure safety, three men at least must be posted at every dangerous station. No keeper is allowed to engage in any busi- ness which may interfere with his presence at the lighthouse. However, there are some keepers who work at tailorings shoemaking, and similar trades ; and there are others who are preachers, school-teachers and justices of the peace. The keeper whose lighthouse is located on land is encouraged to keep a gar- den, and a barn is provided for his horses and cattle. Until a few years ago many keepers greatly increased their incomes by taking 214 THE SEA ROVERS boarders in the summer — life in a lighthouse has a strong attraction for those fond of the romantic— but the Lighthouse Board finally prohibited the renting of quarters to outsid- ers in buildings owned and constructed by the Government, and this pleasant and conven- ient source of revenue was cut off. Whenever keepers are located at stations where the cost of carriage exceeds the cost of fuel and rations, they are furnished at the ex- pense of the Government. This applies to the keeper of the lighthouse on a big rock near Cape Ann. No sea-going vessel can come within a quarter of a mile of his home, and it is impossible for a loaded boat to reach his abiding-place in safety. The coal he uses is shipped in bags from Boston to as near the lighthouse as the vessel can approach. The bags are then loaded into small boats and taken to the edge of the shoal water, inside of which it is dangerous to enter. From the boats the bags are carried ashore on the backs of the crew, who wade through the shoals, clamber up the rocks with their bur- A LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 215 (lens and empty the coal in the lighthouse bin. Coal is worth thirty dollars a ton at Cape Ann lighthouse. The keeper's other bulky sup- plies are delivered in the same manner as his coal. At all the lighthouses built on rocks and ledges the keepers have to be supplied with fresh water from the mainland, that collected from rains in cisterns and tanks being gener- ally insufficient for their needs. Each light- house keeper is supplied by the Government with a well-selected library of fifty volumes. There are five hundred and fifty of these li- braries, and they are continually kept mov- ing from station to station, the inspector, when he makes his quarterly visit, bringing a fresh library, and taking the old one with him, to his next stopping-place. Captain Oliver Brooks, now living in hon- ored and well-earned retirement, besides be- ing for thirty years keeper of the great light on Faulkner's Island, ^ve miles off the Con- necticut coast in Long Island Sound, was also one of the most remarkable men ever con- 216 THE SEA ROVERS nected with the lighthouse service. He had been a sea captain before he became a light- house keeper and was a man of signal me- chanical skill and marked inventive genius. His knowledge of electricity, and of light and sound was thorough and exact, and the re- sults of many of his experiments, adopted by the Lighthouse Board, have contributed greatly to the improvement of the service. All the apparatus with which he conducted his experiments was constructed by him in a lit- tle workshop he had fitted up in the lighthouse tower. But his fondness for the theoretical never caused him to neglect in the slightest detail the practical side of his work, and he was, in- deed, a model keeper. Faulkner's Island lies directly in the path of all vessels passing either in or out of the Sound, and its light is one of the most important ones on our coasts, but there has not been a night in more than a hundred years that it has not flashed out its warning to sailors. The island was a barren and desolate spot when Captain Brooks THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 217 settled there, but he and his family turned it into a paradise. All of his large family of boys and girls were born there, and there grew up to sturdy manhood and splendid womanhood. One daughter was an author- ity on ornithology; another, a gifted water- color artist, and every one of the children was a skilled musician, their family concerts, in which not less than five different instruments were brought into play, being treats to hear. All of the children had noble records as life- savers, and many were the men, women and children they saved from death in the treacherous waters surrounding their island home. It was not until his youngest child had left the island that the captain gave up his place as keeper to spend his last days on shore. Even better known than Captain Brooks is the keeper of Lime Rock light in Newport harbor. Should you chance to be in Newport on some pleasant summer afternoon, walk out on the long wharf that runs from the main- land into the west side of the harbor, and 218 THE SEA ROVERS when you have reached its end, wave your handkerchief toward the lighthouse opposite. Soon a woman will appear in the door of the tall gray tower, and running down to the boat moored to the stone wall, step into it, take the oars, and with graceful yet powerful strokes, pull rapidly toward the wharf. As she approaches her erect back and evident strength give the impression of youth, but as she turns the boat about to receive you for a visit to the lighthouse you discover to your surprise that she is a woman of middle age. Your hostess is Ida Lewis, keeper of Lime Rock light and famous as the American Grace Darling, a modest and kindly hearted hero- ine, whose skill and daring have saved nearly as many lives as there are years in her own. In fact, it was due in part to her record as a life-saver, that she was given the place she now fills. Besides attending to her duties as keeper, there are other cares that keep her busy; she is a careful housewife, keeps abreast of current literature; and is a de- voted churchwoman, spending her Sundays on THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 219 shore whenever possible. To her credit, no light in her district is as regularly or per- fectly attended to, nor does any other gain from the inspector so high a report as Lime Rock light. There are several other women light-keep- ers, but none of them has ever had to face an experience as trying as that which a few years ago befell the wife of Angus Campbell, keeper of the light on Great Bird Rock, a lonely islet in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and the farthest beacon to the harbors of Nova Scotia. "When the late fall comes and the tardy fishermen hasten away to the mainland, the gulf turns to ice and hems the rock in with a clutch that only the returning summer can loosen. There, in the autumn of 1896, Angus Campbell took his newly wedded wife to share his loneliness. During the winter James Duncan and George Bryson, two of Campbell's friends, journeyed to Great Bird Rock to remain until spring. They were pro- fessional seal hunters, and a great many seals 220 THE SEA EOVERS play around on the ice and rocks at the foot of the big cliff. The men landed on the rock early in Feb- ruary. At that time there was no open water within five or six miles of the lighthouse in any direction. The men were landed on the ice and made their way up to where Campbell was waiting for them. On February 27, Campbell and his visitors left the rock to go in pursuit of the seals they had noticed on the ice the day before. His wife saw them start across the ice and then returned to her house- hold duties. They had not been gone more than four hours, when the wind, which had been growing colder and blowing steadily from the eastward, shifted to the southwest. The southwest wind is the agency that dashes the ice fields against the cliff and breaks them up. She thought that the men, being so much lower, might not have noticed the wind, and she hoisted the danger signal. They must have seen it, for she soon caught sight of them hurrying over the ice toward the rock. They were within gunshot of the light- THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 221 house, when the ice cracked with a sound like thunder, and a long, blue line appeared, run- ning east and west, parallel with the light- house rock and with North Bird Rock; about five miles to the westward. The big crack was followed by a general splitting up of the ice floe. She saw the men standing just the other side of the open water. She saw her husband wave his hands at her and she waved back. Then the darkness came, like a great blanket dropped from the wintry skies, and men and ice were blotted from her vision. But even in her sore distress she did not forget the duty incumbent on the lighthouse keeper. She clambered up into the lantern and lighted the great oil lamp, saw that it was filled, and attended to the other duties she had seen her husband perform. Morning, when it came, gave no glimpse of her husband and his companions, nor did the third or the fourth day bring them back to her. After that the days grew into weeks, and the worse than widowed woman found herself confined to lonely and racking impris- 222 THE SEA ROVERS onment on the ice-locked rock. But not for a single night did she fail to fill and light the lamp that had been her hapless husband's charge. When the Government steamer touched at Great Bird Rock, on May 5, 1897, the captain looked long and earnestly at the lighthouse perched far above him, and won- dered why there was not the customary greet- ing. He saw no sign of life. There was the derrick rope swinging in the wind, but no moving figures at the top of the cliff, as there were wont to be. Closely scanning the rock, he saw at last a white, gaunt face at the window. In a little while a thin, tottering figure crept to the brow of the ledge, but it was some minutes before the tender's captain could recognize in that wasted being the comely woman whom he had known as Angus Campbell 's wife. " Where is your husband f" he shouted. " Angus is dead," came the answer, in a faint, palsied voice, "and so are Jim Dun- can and George Bryson." An instant later the captain had swung THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 223 himself into the derrick ropes and was mak- ing his way up the rocks. When he reached the woman she burst into tears and fell at his feet. Calmed at last, she told her story. "How did you stand it!" asked the captain when she had finished. "God knows," was the reply. "I knew I had to keep that light burning, and that I think kept me alive. That was all I had to do, except watch the sea through my hus- band's glass. I got up night after night, and I do not think I ever slept two hours at a time. There were plenty of provisions, but I could not eat more than one meal a day, and sometimes I did not eat that. I had some hope on the morning after the boys were car- ried out on the ice floe, that they might be in sight and might be saved some way. But that morning there was nothing to be seen but water and ice. Then hope was gone. I knew there was nothing to do but wait for the spring. And I have done it. Every day I have swept the horizon with the aid of the glasses. It was merely a formality, after a 224 THE SEA KOVERS while, but I kept on doing it. I do not know why. At last life got. to be like being buried alive. I had no interest in living. I had no appetite, no thought of sleep. In all the time I do not suppose I have slept two hours in succession, nor at any time eaten more than one scanty meal a day. I was going crazy, and should have killed myself or died of star- vation in another week." A few days later Mrs. Campbell was re- moved from the rock to her former home in Prince Edward Island. Many of the most picturesque lighthouses in the United States establishment are on the rocks and islands off the coast of Maine. Notable for its beauty is the one on Matinicus Rock. The first lighthouse thereon, erected in 1827, was a cobblestone dwelling with a wooden tower at each end. Twenty years later this was replaced by a granite dwelling with semicircular towers, which has since* devel- oped into an establishment requiring the services of a keeper and three assistants. Matinicus Rock rises fifty feet above the sea, THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 225 and presents what seems a precipitous front to the ocean, but there is no more rugged, dan- gerous coast along the seaboard of Maine than here, and when a gale rages the waves pound the rock as if bent upon washing it away, the thunder of the green-gray wall that beats against it, sounding, at such times, like the cannonade of a hundred heavy guns. Life on Matinicus for years past has been a never ending struggle between man and the elements, and this lends peculiar interest to the history of the light and its watchers, bound up with which is a love story at once tender, wholesome, and true. Captain Burgess, keeper of the rock from 1853 to 1861, had a daughter Abby, a maiden as comely as she was brave, whom he often left in charge of the lights while he crossed to Matinicus Is- land. On one occasion rough weather for three weeks barred his return to the rock, and during all that time, Abby, then a girl of sev- enteen, not only tended the lights, but cared for her invalid mother and her younger bro- thers and sisters. 226 THE SEA EOVEES In 1861 Captain Grant succeeded Captain Burgess on Matinicus, taking his son with him as assistant. The old keeper left Abby on the rock to instruct the newcomers in their duties, and she performed the task so well that young Grant fell in love with her, and asked her to become his wife. Soon after their marriage she was appointed an assistant keeper. A few years later the husband was made keeper and the wife assistant keeper of White Head, another light on the Maine coast. There they remained until the spring of 1890, when they removed to Middleborough, Mass., intending to pass the balance of their days beyond sight and hearing of the rocks and the waves. But the hunger which the sea breeds in its adopted children was still strong within them, and the fall of 1892 found them again on the coast of Maine, this time at Portland, where the husband again entered the light- house establishment, working in the engi- neers ' department of the first lighthouse dis- trict. With them until his death lived Cap- tain Grant, who in the closing months of 1890, THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 227 being then aged eighty-five, retired from the position of keeper of Matinicus light, which he had held for nearly thirty years. Not less lonely, but far more perilous than the life of the keepers of a light like that on Matinicus is the lot of the crew of the South Shoal lightship, whose position twenty-six miles off Sankaty Head, Nantucket Island, makes it the most exposed light-station in the world. Anchored so far out at sea, it is only during the months of summer and autumn that the lighthouse tender ventures to visit it, and its crew from December to May of each year are wholly cut off from communication with the land. It is this, however, that makes the South Shoal lightship a veritable protec- ing angel of the deep, for it stands guard not only over the treacherous New South Shoal, near which it is anchored, but over twenty- six miles of rips and reefs between it and the Nantucket shore — a wide-reaching ocean graveyard, where bleach the bones of more than a half thousand wrecked and forgotten vessels. 228 THE SEA KOVERS The lightship is a stanchly built two-hulled schooner of 275 tons burden, 103 feet long over all, equipped with fore-and-aft lantern masts 71 feet high, and with two masts for sails, each 42 feet high. The lanterns are oc- tagons of glass in copper frames, so arranged that they can be lowered into houses built around the masts. In the forward part of the ship is a huge fog bell, swung ten feet above the deck, which, when foggy weather prevails, as it frequently does for weeks at a time, is kept tolling day and night. A two-inch chain fastened to a "mushroom" anchor weighing upward of three tons holds the vessel in eight- een fathoms of water, but this, so fiercely do the waves beat against it in winter, has not prevented her from going adrift many times. She was two weeks at sea on one of these oc- casions, and on another she came to anchor in New York Harbor. Life on the South Shoal lightship is at all times a hard and try- ing one, and, as a matter of fact, the crew are instructed not to expose themselves to danger outside their special line of duty. THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER 229 This, however, does not deter them from fre- quently risking their lives in rescuing others, and when, several years ago, the City of New- castle went ashore on one of the shoals near the lightship, all hands, twenty-seven in num- ber, were saved by the South Shoal crew and kept aboard of her over two weeks, until the story of the wreck was signalled to a passing vessel. Nor are the South Shoal crew alone among lighthouse keepers in displays of heroism out- side the duties required of them. Isaac H. Grant holds a silver medal given him by the Government for rescuing two men from drowning while he was keeper at White Head ; and Keeper Marcus Hanna, of the Cape Eliz- abeth station, Maine, received a gold medal for the daring rescue of two sailors from a wreck during a severe storm, while Frederick Hatch, keeper of the Breakwater station at Cleveland was awarded the gold bar. The last mentioned badge of honor is granted only to one who has twice distinguished himself by a special act of bravery. It was given Hatch 230 THE SEA EOVERS in the winter of 1898. A wreck occurred at night, just outside the breakwater. The eight people aboard made their way to the break- water pier, but the heavy seas swept several of them back, and one lost his life. Pulling to the pier in a small boat, Keeper Hatch took off the captain's wife; but she was hardly in the boat before it was swamped and capsized. The woman was utterly exhausted and almost a dead weight; but though nearly overcome himself, Hatch, at the risk of his life, main- tained his hold upon her until he could reach a line thrown from the light-station, with which he and his helpless burden were drawn to the lighthouse steps. Before that, and while a member of the life-saving crew at Cleveland, Hatch had helped to rescue twenty- nine persons from two vessels on two suc- cessive days during a terrific gale. CHAPTER IX LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHOKE With each recurring autumn at nearly 300 points on our 8,000 miles of seacoast, careful preparations begin for the winter campaign of the life-saving service. Conducted in the face of constant peril and hardship, this an- nual battle with disaster, storm and death is a peaceful, yet always glorious one. During the year 1905 alone it resulted in the saving of more than 4,000 lives and the rescue of nearly $8,000,000 worth of property, imper- illed by wreck and storm, all of which would otherwise have been lost. The United States Life-saving Service is now the most complete and effective organization of its kind in the world, furnishing a model and pattern for those of other countries. The story of its 231 232 THE SEA ROVEBS rapid development during the last thirty-five years is also the inspiring record of the life work of one of our most sagacious and de- voted public servants, Sumner I. Kimball, a modest, blue-eyed, kindly-faced man of mid- dle age, whose untiring labors in this field long since gave him a foremost place among the great benefactors of his time. When in 1871, Mr. Kimball was made Chief of the Eevenue Marine Bureau of the Treas- ury Department, the live-saving service had slender existence, save on paper. He found the station-houses sadly neglected and dilap- idated, the apparatus rusty or broken, and many of the salaried keepers disabled by age or incompetent and neglectful of their duties. The outlook would have discouraged a man less resolute and determined than the new chief, but he had conceived the splendid idea of guarding the entire coast of the nation with a chain of fortresses garrisoned by disci- plined conquerors of the sea, and he set about the accomplishment of his self-imposed task with patience, sagacity and skill. LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 233 He reorganized the service and prepared a code of regulations for its control, in which the duties of every member were carefully de- fined. Politics, the bane of the service in former years, was rigidly eliminated. Lazy, careless and incompetent employees were promptly dismissed, and their places filled with capable and faithful surfmen. The sta- tion-houses were repaired and increased, and equipped with the best life-saving devices hu- man skill and ingenuity had thus far brought forth. Last and most important of all, a thorough and effective system of inspection and patrol was inaugurated, and so successful did it prove that during the first year's oper- ation of the new system every person imper- illed by shipwreck was saved. The service has been wisely extended from year to year, until now it has 270 stations, three-fourths of which are along the Atlantic coast, while oth- ers are on the lakes ; a board of life-saving ap- pliances; telephone lines for prompt opera- tions and a splendid corps of assistant superintendents, experts, inspectors, station- 234 THE SEA BOVEBS keepers and mariners. The yearly cost of the service at the present time is slightly less than $1,800,000, a sum ridiculously small when the saving of life and property is taken into consideration. Life at a life-saving station is never an idle one. The routine followed at the Avalon, New Jersey station, as I have observed it, in essential details, is the same as that prac- ticed at all of the stations of the service. Four days of every week are devoted to drill. On Tuesdays the keeper orders out the surf- boat and drills the crew in riding breakers and landing through heavy surf. On Wednes- day he gives the men practical instruction in the working of the international signal code. On Thursday the Lyle gun is ordered out, and one of the crew, taking up a position some distance down the shore near a post stuck in the sand, personates a seaman on a stranded vessel. The other members of the crew plant the gun and fire a line which the watcher pulls in and rigs to the post. Then the men at the other end of the line dispatch the breeches- LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 235 buoy and gallantly effect the rescue of their comrade. On Friday the recovery drill is carefully gone through. One of the crew as- sumes the role of a half-drowned sailor, and his comrades resuscitate him by rolling him on the sand and producing artificial breath- ing, according to the rules laid down for the purpose. Saturday is general cleaning day. The discipline of the crew is never relaxed and none of its members can go out of sight of the station save by special permission or when off duty. The night hours at a life-saving station af- ford a much more thrilling story than the one I have just been relating. Each crew is divided into three night watches. The first watch goes on duty at sundown and patrols the beach until eight o'clock, at which hour the second watch relieves it and patrols until midnight, when the third watch sallies out and does duty until four o'clock in the morning. Then the first watch again goes on patrol and keeps watch until sunrise. During the day a surfman is constantly on the lookout in the 236 THE SEA ROVERS watch-tower of the station. If the weather be clear, this precaution suffices, but if it is cloudy and storms threaten, the beach patrols are continued through the day. Each watch consists of two men, who, upon leaving the station, separate and follow their beats to the right and left until they meet the patrolmen from the neighboring stations on either side, with whom they exchange checks — this to show the keeper they have covered their respective beats. On the Atlantic seaboard, stations are now within an average distance of five miles of each other, but often the beats of the surfmen are six and seven miles long. It is a part of the surf man's duties to keep a con- stant watch of the sea and to note the vessels by the lights displayed, and, if they approach too close to the shore or outlying sandbars, give them timely warning. For this purpose he always carries a Coston signal, which, when exploded by percussion, emits a red flame that flashes far out over the water and warns the unwary ship of its peril. Last year more than two hundred vessels, warned LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 237 in this way, at once changed conrse and ran ont of danger. If the snrfman observes a vessel that is stationary, he must determine whether she is at anchor or in distress, and if the latter proves to be the case, he displays his Coston signal, to assure the shipwrecked that aid is close at hand, and then hastens to the station to give the alarm to the keeper. The work of the patrolmen involves fre- quent danger and almost constant hardship. Imagine, if you can, and that is impossible, the lot of a surfman on the Jersey coast dur- ing one of the great storms sure to occur once or twice in every winter. A fearful night has followed a stormy and lowering day. Inky darkness shrouds sea and land, and the wind, blowing at the rate of fifty miles an hour, pipes and roars defiance to the pa- trolmen as they struggle along their lonely beats. The driving snow freezes on their cheeks and chins ; wet sand is flung into their faces and cuts with the keenness of a razor, while great masses of icy foam beat fiercely on the head and face and body at every dozen 238 THE SEA BOVERS steps. Huge waves break at the foot of the sand dunes along which they painfully labor, and drench them again and again, often fell- ing them to the ground. Every twenty or thirty yards they pause, and, baring their faces to the pelting snow and foam, search the ocean for lights. In this way hours pass before the prescribed beat is traversed, and the surfmen, wet, half -frozen, bruised and ex- hausted, seek for a brief season the warmth and shelter of the station-house. Sometimes weakness overcomes them and they are un- able to reach this refuge. When the patrolman descries a vessel among the breakers, he displays his Coston signal, to give assurance that aid is at hand, and then hurries to the station and arouses his comrades. From the report of the patrol- man the keeper makes quick decision as to the best methods to be employed in effecting a rescue. If the surfboat is to be used, the doors of the boat-room are instantly thrown open and the boat-carriage drawn out and hauled by the crew to a point opposite the LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 239 wreck. Then the boat is launched and the surfmen depart upon their errand of mercy. The surfboat is usually of cedar, with white oak frame, without keel, and provided with air cases, which render it insubmergible. Com- paratively light, it can be hauled long dis- tances, and is the only boat that has been found suitable for launching from flat beaches through the shoaling waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Handled by expert oars- men, its action is often marvelous, and, al- though easily capsized, there are few recorded instances of its having been upset with fatal results while passing through the surf. Often repeated attempts have to be made before a wreck can be reached, and even then the great- est care must be exercised to avoid collision with the plunging hull or injury from floating wreckage and falling spars. When the be- numbed and exhausted crew and passengers, who have usually sought refuge in the rigging from the overwhelming seas, have been taken off, the difficult return to shore yet remains. Sometimes the boat is run in behind a roller, 240 THE SEA EOVEES and by quick and clever work kept out of the way of the following one, and the shore is gained in safety. At other times the boat is backed in, the oars being used now and then to keep it upon its course, and again, when the sea is unusually high, a drag is em- ployed to check the force of the incoming breakers and prevent the boat from being capsized. In the manner described, boat and crew make repeated trips through the break- ers until all have been taken off the stranded vessel, and the work of rescue is at last completed. When the condition of the sea prevents the use of the surfboat the mortar cart, equipped with a small bronze, smooth-bore gun, named for the inventor, Captain Lyle, of the army, is ordered out. Its destination reached, the gun is placed in position and loaded by mem- bers of the crew trained to the work, while others adjust the shot-line box, arrange the hauling lines and hawser, connect the breeches-buoy, prepare the tackles for haul- ing, and with pick and spade dig a trench for LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHOEE 241 the sand-anchor. With these preparations completed, comes the firing of the gun. The shot speeds over the wreck and into the sea beyond, while the crew of the imperilled ves- sel seize and make fast the line attached. The surfmen next attach to the short-line the whip (an endless line), the tail-block and tally- board, and these are in turn hauled in by the sailors. And then by means of the whip, the surfmen dispatch the hawser and a second tallyboard, which directs how and where the end of the hawser shall be fastened to the wreck. When the tackle connecting the sand anchor and the shore end of the hawser is straight and taut, it is lifted several feet in the air and further tightened by the erection of a wooden crotch, which does duty as a tem- porary pier, while the wreck answers for an- other. Finally the breeches-buoy is drawn back and forth on the hawser, and the ship- wrecked brought safely to shore. On this occasion there have been no delays, but at other times there are numerous obstacles to be overcome. The ropes may snarl or tangle 242 THE SEA ROVERS or be snapped asunder by the rolling of the vessel, and again, the imperilled crew may perform their share of the work in a bungling manner, or unexpected accidents befall, which tax to the utmost the patience, resources and courage of the surfmen. In many cases peo- ple held suspended in the breakers or en- snarled in the floating cordage and debris of the vessel, have only been rescued by the most daring exploits of the surfmen, who, at the greatest risk of life and limb, have worked their way through the surf, released the help- less victims of the wreck, and brought them to shore. The breeches-buoy, to which reference has been made, is a circular life-preserver of cork, to which short canvas breeches are attached, and will hold two persons. But when a large number of people are to be rescued, the life- car, invented by Joseph Francis and con- nected with the hawser by a simple device to prevent it from drifting, is used. This is a water-tight, covered boat of galvanized sheet iron and will carry five or six adults at a A LIFE-SAVER ON PATROL LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 243 time. At its first trial more than two hun- dred persons were rescued from the wreck of the Ayrshire on the New Jersey coast, when no other means could have availed. Silks, jewels and other valuables have often been saved by its use and from one vessel the car took ashore a large sum of gold bullion be- longing to the United States, together with the mails. On the lake and Pacific coasts, where the shores are steep and the water deep, the self-righting and self-bailing life- boat is in general use. This, the best life- boat yet devised, is the result of more than a century of study and experiment, following the first model designed in 1780 by an Eng- lish coachman, Lionel Lukin. It possesses great stability, is rarely upset, and when this happens instantly rights itself, while when full of water it empties itself in from fifteen to twenty seconds. The work of the life-savers seldom ends with the rescue. After all have been brought ashore from a wreck, the benumbed and help- less sufferers are quickly conveyed to the sta- 244 THE SEA ROVERS tion-house, transferred for the moment into a hospital, where an abundance of dry clothing is instantly applied; the prostrated ones put to bed; lint, plasters and bandages supplied to the bruised and wounded, and stimulants from the medicine chest, never absent from any station, given to those who need them. At the same time the mess-cook prepares and serves out hot coffee alike to rescued and res- cuers. When this has been partaken of, the keeper assigns a portion of the crew to look after the needs of the strangers and the oth- ers retire to rest until called to relieve the patrol. After what has been written one would ex- pect to find rich material for true stories of peril, adventure and heroism; and for ro- mances in real life among the records of the life-saving service — stories that never fail to stir the blood and quicken the pulse of those to whom they are told. And such is the case. The annals of the service are replete with splendid deeds of daring, and each month's record adds to the roll of honor. Often the LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 245 surf men know they are going forth to almost certain death, and yet never a moment do they falter. A year or so ago a crew that res- cued four sailors from a stranded vessel un- der the most trying conditions, before launch- ing their boat, left their slender effects in the charge of a comrade for the benefit of their families — not one of them believing that they would return alive ! And when the life- savers went off through the violent sea to res- cue those on board the German ship Eliza- beth, stranded on the Virginia coast, in Jan- uary, 1887, all but two of the crew perished, together with the entire ship 's company. The brave fellows ' doom was sealed from the first, but this did not swerve them from their duty. One of the saddest chapters in the annals of the service deals with the death of the keeper and two of the surfmen of the Peaked Hill Bar Station, on the Massachusetts coast. In the waning hours of a stormy November night, fifteen years ago, the sloop Trum- bull was descried by the patrol on the inner bar, and a few moments later the lifeboat, 246 THE SEA KOVEES manned by Keeper Atkins and Surfmen Mayo, Taylor, Kelly, Yonng and Fisher, was on the way to the rescue. The crew, save two who, refusing assistance, remained on board the vessel, were speedily brought to land. The gale was now increasing and the sea running mountain high, but Keeper At- kins and his crew again essayed the rescue of the two men, who still remained on the Trumbull. It was very dark, and the life- boat in approaching the ship was struck by a swinging boom and capsized. After clinging for a time to the upturned boat, the surfmen released their hold and attempted to swim to shore, Surfmen Kelly, Young and Fisher reached the beach barely alive, and were picked up and tenderly cared for by a com- rade, but Keeper Atkins and Surfmen Mayo and Taylor, although strong swimmers, were finally overcome and vanished in the storm and darkness. The sea gave up their bodies many hours later, and there were few dry eyes among the hundreds who followed to LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 247 their graves three heroes as dauntless as ever were sung in song or story. One of the most gallant rescues performed within the scope of the service stands to the credit of the Dam Neck Mills crew, on the coast of Virginia. The schooner Jennie Hall, bound from Trinidad to Baltimore, sailing in a dense fog, struck bottom a few miles south of Cape Henry. A tempest was blow- ing, and a deluge of sleet blinded and be- numbed the crew as they clung to the mizzen- mast, on which they had taken refuge. The captain had been swept away while attempt- ing to cross the deck, and it seemed certain that the almost helpless sailors must soon fol- low him. Blind desperation alone gave them strength to endure until the morning. Then, in the dawning of the day, through the lifting curtain of mist, they saw the life-savers pre- paring to attempt their rescue. The sea was still too high to warrant the launching of the lifeboat. What must be done was to get a hawser to the schooner, and then, by means 248 THE SEA EOVEES of the breeches-buoy, haul off the wrecked men. The gun was, therefore, placed in position, and the shot-line coiled properly, so as to fol- low without fouling. The ship was about three hundred yards off shore. The shot was fired, and the line carried just over the rig- ging at the necessary spot. All would have gone well had not the block of the whip-line become fouled. The men on the mast were too exhausted to extricate it, so the whip-line was hauled to shore, and the shot-line cut away. Another shot was fired. This time it landed out of the reach of the wrecked men, now almost insensible from cold and exhaus- tion. Still another shot was fired, this time fairly in the hands of the unfortunates. The whip-line was painfully drawn to the mast and properly made fast. Then the hawser was drawn slowly from shore, and also prop- erly fixed around the mast. Just as the breeches-buoy was being sent out to make the rescue at last, just as safety and warmth and life were within their grasp, two of the six LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 249 fell to the deck, struck like lead, and were washed overboard, never more to be seen. The breeches-buoy had now reached the mast. Two of the men managed to get in, and were hauled ashore, unconscious, very nearly dead. Again the buoy went on its errand of mercy, and the mate was brought to safety. There was still one man left on the mast. The buoy was sent back for him. But he made no sign of life. Somebody must go out for him. A surf- man by the name of O'Neal put himself in the buoy and was hauled to the wreck. He found that the man, now unconscious, had so firmly lashed himself to the crosstrees that it was not in his power to extricate him without help. So he returned to the shore for an as- sistant. An ex-surfman, Drinkwater by name, volunteered to go back with him. The sea having gone down a trifle, the keeper de- cided to place them on board the wreck by the lifeboat. A crew was called, and the res- cuers rowed out through a still tremendous sea to the Jennie Hall. The two men skil- 250 THE SEA EOVEES fully got aboard, and climbed the mast, the lifeboat in the meanwhile, after nearly a fatal accident, returning to the beach. Even with help, 'Neal had great difficulty in getting the remaining sailor out of the rigging. But it was finally done, and the well-nigh frozen man sent ashore. Then the two life-savers re- turned in the buoy. The records of the live-saving crews of the Great Lakes also abound with thrilling and heroic incidents. These vast inland seas, with 2,500 miles of American coast-line, are sub- ject to sudden and violent gales, in which an- chored vessels are swept fore and aft, often causing their total destruction, while others seeking shelter in harbors are driven help- lessly upon jutting piers or the still more dan- gerous beach ; and frequently just before win r ter suspends navigation on the lakes, a single life-saving crew is employed upon several wrecks at a time. Again, the lifeboats often go under sail and oar many miles from their station to aid vessels in distress. "When the steamer Bestchey was wrecked near Grind- LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 251 stone City, seven miles from the Point anx Barques station, on Lake Huron, a few years ago, the crew hurried to the rescue, and found several hundred people watching the breaking up of the wreck, but powerless to aid the pas- sengers and crew, who, for ten hours, had been face to face with suffering and death. When the lifeboat had been launched and the ship 's side gained, two of the surf men leaped into the water, and by the aid of ropes, after a desperate struggle gained the steamer's deck and directed the difficult and dangerous task of transferring those on board to the boat. Eleven women and a small boy were lowered over the bulwarks, and the boat, shov- ing off, gained the pier in safety. Four trips were made within an hour, and all on board, more than forty persons, brought ashore. A few months later the Point aux Barques crew responded to signals of distress displayed by a vessel three miles away, and in the fearful storm that was raging, their boat was cap- sized. The men tried to cling to it, but the cold overcame them, and one after another 252 THE SEA ROVERS perished until six were gone. Only the keeper, bruised and insensible, was washed ashore, and he was so badly injured that he was forced to resign his position. Thus in one day, the service lost all the members of one of its most skilful and gallant crews. Dur- ing the same year the men at the Point aux Barques Station had been the means of saving more than a hundred lives. Still the life of the surfmen has its merry, as well as its serious moods. Each station is provided with a small but well selected li- brary, and the men find it a constant source of instruction and delight. Then there is al- ways in every crew one or two who can play a violin, flute or accordion, and often when the weather is fine and the wind off shore, the surfmen gather in the messroom and listen to the music of their companions or sing songs and spin yarns, the latter couched in a quaint and awkward vernacular, yet full of life and spirit, and redolent of the sea and the waves. Often on clear, moonlit nights there are ' ' sur- prise parties ' ' at the station, made up of the LIFE-SAVING ALONG SHORE 253 wives, sisters and sweethearts of the crew, who always bring with them a generous store of household dainties for those they love, sure to prove a welcome addition to the surf men's plain, but substantial fare. On such occa- sions the boat-room is quickly cleared for the dance, and joy and merriment hold unfettered sway. And, yet, never is the patrol relaxed, nor do the surfmen forget the stern call to duty that may come to them at any moment. "When I see a man clinging to a wreck,' ' said a sturdy surf man, not long ago, "I see noth- ing else in the world, nor think of family and friends until I have saved him." And it is but simple truth to say that this heroic spirit animates every member of the life-saving service. CHAPTER X WHALEES OF THE AECTIC SEA In the streets and hotels, or more often the smoking-room of the custom-honse of the beautiful old town of New Bedford, Mas- sachusetts, one meets in these latter times certain quiet, elderly men who, save for their weather-beaten faces, an occasional scar, the deference shown them, and the title of * ' cap- tain, ' ' give no sign of the stormy and adven- turous lives they have led. These nlen be- long to a most interesting class, and one which promises to soon become extinct. They are the whaling captains of the old days, when, with whaling still one of the most prosperous and important of our national industries, the New Bedford whalers carried the American flag to the most distant parts of the globe, and 254 WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 255 yearly poured a golden stream into the strong-boxes of their shrewd and venture- some owners. Cabin-boys at twelve, captains before they were twenty-five, at fifty, stranded hulks — having often made and lost great fortunes, made them for others, lost them for themselves — in such quiet havens as chance or fortune affords, they now peace- fully and with perfect contentment await the end that sooner or later comes to us all. For more than a century, New Bedford has been the centre in this country of the indus- try of which these old captains are pathetic reminders; but in recent years it has made San Francisco the headquarters of its ships. They all carry the name of New Bedford on their sterns, and are owned and com- manded by New Bedford men; but, as whal- ing is now mainly carried on in Alaskan waters, San Francisco has become the princi- pal point of arrival and departure. Only the Atlantic whalers, dwindled now to less than a dozen, still headquarter in the old capital of the trade. The ships engaged in the whale 256 THE SEA ROVERS trade are clumsy in appearance, and much smaller than most people would imagine, be- ing rarely as large as the three-masted schooners used in the coasting trade. They are strongly built, wide amidships, and as broad as Dutch galleons at the bow. They are so treated with pitch and tar as to last for generations, and are constantly repaired, a part at a time. Some of the stanchest ves- sels in the trade are more than half a century old, and promise to do duty for many years to come. The fleet sailing from San Francisco num- bers between forty and fifty vessels. Some of the captains sail in November, and spend the winter in sperm whaling, putting into Honolulu for fresh supplies at the approach of spring, but the majority leave in March. The whales are fast being driven from the Pacific, and every year the whalers are forced to go farther and farther north for them. Only a few years ago, whales were plentiful in the Northern Pacific and Behring and Okhotsk Seas, but now the whalers have to WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 257 push far into the Arctic to find their game. To make a voyage profitable, a ship must often spend several seasons in the north, and last year the San Francisco fleet sailed prepared for a three years' cruise. Many of the cap- tains took their wives and children with them. They reached Herschel Island late in August, spending last winter as they will the next two, in comfortable quarters at Pauline Cove, re- turning to the United States in the fall of 1909. Pianos and pool and billiard tables were taken along to help while away the long winters, and the members of the fleet, when they return, are sure to have many an inter- esting and stirring story to tell. In order to complete the preparations for its Arctic work, each whaler, after leaving San Francisco, cruises for a few weeks in the central Pacific. During this cruise the crow's nest, or lookout, is put in place, the boats are scrubbed, painted and fitted with sails, steer- ing-gear and oars and the whaling apparatus thoroughly overhauled. Then the ship's rig- ging receives careful attention, weak spots be- 258 THE SEA BOVERS ing made strong, and old sails patched or re- placed, and finally, the hold is restowed and put in shape for the long voyage. The crew of a whaler includes, besides the captain, four mates, one boat-leader, four boat-steerers, a steward, cook, carpenter, cooper, steerage and cabin boys, and from twelve to twenty able seamen. The men instead of being paid reg- ular wages, receive a portion of the profits of the cruise. The captain receives a twelfth, the first mate a twentieth, the second mate and boat-leader each a twenty-fifth, the third mate a thirtieth, the carpenter, cooper and steward each a fiftieth, and the sailors each a hundred and seventy-fifth. The captain's portion ranges from nothing to $7,000 or $8,000, ac- cording to the number of whales taken dur- ing a cruise. If a ship secures twelve whales during a cruise, the captain will receive about $3,000 and a sailor $200. The sailors usually receive an advance of $60 each, and during a cruise are allowed to draw tobacco, clothing and the like, from the ship's supplies, to the amount of $60 or $80. Both officers and men WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 259 keenly appreciate this co-operative system, and toil with great zeal in the hope of extra reward. Formerly whales were valued chiefly for the oil, but the discovery of petroleum worked a change, and the whalebone is now the main thing sought. This product is worth from $4 to $5 a pound, and the average whale contains a little less than a ton of bone. The officers of an Arctic whaler are gener- ally Yankees, but all countries are repre- sented in the forecastle. Americans, Britons, Swedes, Portuguese, Germans, Spaniards, Kanakas, a few stray cowboys, and three or four 'Frisco hoodlums are often found in the same crew. Now and then desperate crimi- nals seek an Arctic cruise to escape punish- ment for their misdeeds, and sometimes in- duce a crew to mutiny. Such an experience befell Captain Edmund Kelly, now living in retirement in New Bedford, when he was mas- ter of the Lucretia. His crew, prompted by three ruffians, who had crept in among them, refused duty soon after the ship entered Beh- ring Sea, and retreated to the forecastle, but 260 THE SEA ROVERS not before the captain had emptied it of such food as it contained. When asked to state their grievances they demanded the release of one of their shipmates who had been pnt in irons for disobedience. This demand Kelly refused to grant, and locked them in the fore- castle, determined, if possible, to starve them into submission. On the third morning the crew, who were all armed with knives and revolvers, broke out of this improvised prison and demanded "bread or blood. ' ' The captain appealed to them to return to duty, but the three ring-leaders threatened to shoot the first man who wav- ered, and none responded. It was a critical moment, but Kelly, sprung from a race of fighting men, proved equal to it. Picking up a rifle, he walked in among the mutineers, and singling out the leader, ordered him to sur- render. The man refused, and the captain raised his rifle to his shoulder, but before he could fire, the mutineer snapped a revolver twice in his face, and then took refuge among his companions. Kelly tried to follow him, WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 261 but his progress was impeded by the crew, and the rascal he was seeking now stole up behind him, took careful aim, and fired. The officers, who were standing aft in a group, thinking their captain had been killed, fired upon the mutineer, wounding him in the leg. Happily, however, Kelly had only received a slight scalp wound. He regained his feet in an instant, and facing the mutineer, who was now crawling towards him with cocked revol- ver in hand, took aim and fired, whereat the man fell back dead with a bullet in his heart. The others, begging for mercy, threw down their arms, and the mutiny was at an end. During the rest of the voyage they proved a most obedient and tractable crew. When Captain Kelly returned to San Francisco, he reported the affair to the federal courts. The judge who heard the evidence discharged him, and at the same time reproved him for failing to shoot the other leaders of the mutiny. When all is in readiness for the Arctic cruise, the captain of a whaler changes the southwesterly course he has followed since 262 THE SEA BOVEBS leaving port, and heads for the north. The passage through Behring Sea, on account of the great fields of floating ice which fill that body at all seasons, is always a trying and often a dangerous one, and the whaling mas- ters must of necessity be most skilful navi- gators. Pushing a ship in safety from lead to lead, and among the threatening cakes of an ice-floe, calls for the most consummate skill, and it is a lesson mastered by sailors only after a long and hard experience. In addition to the highest skill, the captain — or disaster surely awaits him — must possess a resolute will that falters not, even in the face of death. For weeks his ship is seldom out of peril, and he must be ready at all times to make his escape from a threatening pack or an approaching floe. Some years ago, the ship Hunter, Cap- tain Cogan, when off St. Lawrence Island, was caught in a whirlpool and seriously dis- abled. He patched up his ship as best he could and made a fresh start. Off Icy Cape, bottom ice was struck, causing a serious leak, .WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 263 and the captain was forced to seek refuge in the nearest haven. Here every movable ob- ject was taken out of the ship and carried on shore. Then the spars were unshipped and converted into a raft, which was anchored at both ends and steadied with water casks. Using the raft as a wharf, and in the face of a blinding storm, the ship was hove down, the keel raised above the surface of the water, and the leak repaired. Captain Cogan's cruise up to that time had been a fruitless one, but three months later he sailed safely into port with a valuable cargo. Similar experi- ences befall the whalers every year. During the long and toilsome passage through Behring Sea, a sharp lookout is kept for whales, but few are now caught south of Cape Navarin, and whaling does not com- mence in earnest until the ships are well out into the Arctic. Each ship has five whale- boats, and when the lookout in the crow's nest reports a whale in sight, the crews spring into them and are off in an instant. The captain, however, remains on the ship, and from the 264 THE SEA BOVERS crow's nest directs the boats by a code of signals. The boats always approach their prey un- der sail, as the use of paddle or oar would startle the whale and cause it to beat a hasty retreat. The old method of whaling with harpoons and lances thrown by hand has been superseded during the last twenty years by the whale-gun, and as a consequence what was once a royal sport has now sadly degenerated. The new weapon is a heavy metallic shoulder- gun fastened to a pole about six feet long. As the boat nears its intended victim, a harpoon attached to several hundred fathoms of line is shot from the gun, and having been "made fast," a bomb, filled with an explosive equal to about ten pounds of giant powder, is fired into the huge body near the head. The mis- sile, exploding as it buries itself in the flesh, blows a great hole almost in the vitals of the monster, and death quickly follows. When the bomb fails to cause instant death or in- flict a mortal wound, a second harpoon with a dynamite attachment is thrown, the needle WHALERS OF THE AECTIC SEA 265 point of the spear, as it sinks into the flesh, exploding the bomb. The second wound nearly always causes instant death; but if not, the harpoons cling to the whale, and with lines attached, the whalers quietly await the reappearance of the whale — which seeks re- lief by plunging beneath the surf ace — for an- other shot at it from the gun, which has in the meantime been reloaded. There is small chance for escape, and another bomb or har- poon from the gun speedily ends the most desperate struggle for life. The sperm whale, the favorite game of the old-time whalers, always puts up a stout battle, but the bow- head whale, found in polar waters, is timid, and dies meekly. When the whale, its struggles ended, rolls over dead, the vessel gets up sail and makes its way to the body, taking it on the star- board side, in front of the gangway. A stage is rigged over the side and just above the floating carcass, which is secured fore and aft by chains. Then the process of taking the bone and blubber from the body com- 266 THE SEA EOVERS mences. First a cut is made through the deep layer of fat beginning at the nose, and, if all the blubber is to be taken off, running back to the flukes or tail. Next cross-incisions are made every four or five feet, and strips of the fat encircling the whale are marked out. After this, tackle is attached to one end of these strips, and men on the stage sever the strip of blubber from the body, as it is then being hoisted on board. Each strip, as it is taken off, rolls the whale around in the water. The most difficult part of the operation I am describing is cutting off the head, which contains all the whalebone. A single false move may destroy hundreds of dollars - worth of bone, or perhaps entail the loss of the en- tire head. Axes are used, and it takes a great deal of hard and skilful chopping to pierce the mountain of flesh. When the backbone has been chopped nearly through, a jerk of the tackle breaks the remainder, and the head is then hauled on deck. As a large whale's head frequently contains several thousand dollars worth of bone, the suspense and anxi- WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 267 ety of the whaler while it is being taken off can be readily understood. When the head has been secured, the work of taking off the remainder of the blubber is resumed. Some vessels save only the bone, and cast the body adrift after the head has been cut off, but these are usually ships without the needed apparatus for trying out the oil. When the blubber has all been stripped from the car- cass, it is cut up into small pieces, and for several days thereafter the crew is briskly employed "trying out" the oil and stowing it away in casks. A large cube of bricks amid- ships contains two great iron kettles with fireplaces beneath, and in these the oil is boiled from the blubber. Black smoke and foul smell attend this operation, and only an old whaler will go to the leeward of the great pots when it is in progress. There is little to break the monotony of the whaler's life while at work. Day after day the same routine is repeated, broken only by an occasional storm, or visits in leisure hours to neighboring vessels. But about the whaler 268 THE SEA ROVERS there is always the glamor of the Arctic, which those who have once felt its spell say can never be forgotten — by day its marvel- lous mirages, weirdly reflecting distant ships, or the ice piled in huge, fantastic masses ; at night the sombre glory of the aurora borealis, and always the cold, serene purity of ice and water and sky. When winter approaches, if one or more ships are to spend a second sea- son in polar waters, quarters are built in some sheltered spot on land, and there, early in Oc- tober, all the vessels rendezvous. On each ship the space between-decks is cleared, stoves set up, and bunks arranged along the middle, away from the sides, so that the cold will not so quickly reach the men through the vessel 's timbers. When the ice forms around the ship, high banks of snow are piled about it to break the force of the piercing winds, and snow is also piled upon the roof built over the decks. This snow soon freezes and will not drift with the fiercest of gales. Thus pre- pared for, a winter in the Arctic has lost many of its former terrors* WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 269 The whaler's homeward passage through Behring Sea is often more difficult and dan- gerous than the outward voyage. With sud- den gales, treachjerous currents, blinding snowstorms, and long, dark nights, each mas- ter must literally feel his way with the lead, getting such aid as he can from log and look- out. Every captain breathes a sigh of relief when he has passed the Straits and is once more in the Pacific, southward bound. There is plenty of work on the return passage. The crow's nest must be taken down and stowed away for another cruise; the masts scraped and varnished; the ship scoured and cleaned above and below ; and finally, if it is a steam vessel, the sails unbent and stowed away. Just before entering port, the crew discard their skin clothing. A few hours later the voyage is at an end, and the men are tasting, perhaps for the first time in years, the delights and comforts of life on shore, and spending with open hand the money they have worked so long and so hard to earn. Whaling in the Arctic saw its best days in 270 THE SEA ROVERS 1852, when the fleet numbered 250 vessels and the value of the catch exceeded $14,000,000. Its gradual decline began a little later, but it received its first serious set-back in June, 1865, when the Confederate cruiser Shenan- doah, making its way without warning into the Arctic, burned thirty and captured four other whalers. New Bedford's loss alone was twenty-three vessels, which, with their outfits, were valued at more than a million dollars. Since then, wind and ice, the ever- present perils of the whaler, have caused two appalling disasters, and further hastened the decline of the trade. The first of these dis- asters occurred in 1871. Between August 11th and 29th of that year, the ice closed in upon the whaling fleet at work near Wainright In- let, and at the end of the month thirty-three vessels were helpless prisoners. During the next week three vessels were crushed or car- ried off by the ice, the crew in each instance narrowly escaping with their lives. Each day the ice packed closer and it became ap- parent to the captains, who held daily meet- WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 271 ings to discuss the situation, that for their ships at least, escape was hopeless. There was not the time nor material to build winter quarters on land, and even had this been pos- sible, the scanty stock of provisions could only postpone certain starvation, or death by scurvy and disease, during the eleven months that must elapse before they could hope for relief to reach them from the outer world. And so it became clear that the crews must be got away before winter came or all would perish. Captain David Frazer, who, with two whaleboats, had been sent to the south to see what could be done, returned on September 12th and reported that he had found the rest of the fleet, seven ships, off Icy Cape, ninety miles to the south. They were also,, he said, fast in the ice, but would be able to work their way out and would lie by to aid their dis- tressed companions. On the receipt of this news, the captains, some of whom were ac- companied by their wives and children, met to decide upon a final course of action. Three 272 THE SEA BOVERS million dollars ' worth of property and 1,200 lives were at stake, and to save the latter all else must be sacrificed. It was then resolved, unless the weather moderated, to abandon the fleet next day. Morning brought no change and the most daring were convinced that nothing but flight remained. The 200 whale- boats of the fleet were manned by their crews and the southward journey begun. There was a narrow strip of water between the ice and shore, and through this the sad procession made its way. At night a camp was made on shore, and on the second day the boats reached Blossom Shoals, and came in sight of the refuge ves- sels. They were lying ^.ve miles out from shore and behind a tongue of ice which stretched ten miles farther down the coast. Around this obstruction the crews were forced to make their way before they could get on board. On the outer side of this icy peninsula a fearful gale was encountered and the boats were tossed about like corks; but by four in the afternoon all dangers were .WHALERS OF THE ABCTIC SEA 273 safely passed and the 1,200 refugees distrib- uted among the several vessels of the fleet. Sail was made at once, and on October 24th the first of the ships reached Honolulu, the others following speedily. Of the splendid fleet of forty vessels that had sailed north- ward less than a year before, only these seven returned; but not a life was lost. When in the following year some of the captains vis- ited the locality where the ships were lost, they found that with one or two exceptions they had all been carried away by the ice, ground to pieces, or burned by the people of a near-by Eskimo village. The value of the wrecked vessels sailing from New Bedford exceeded, with their cargoes, a million dollars. Some of the city's wealthiest whaling-masters were ruined and many more badly crippled by the disaster. Compared with the disaster of 1871, that of 1876 was much less destructive to property, but vastly more appalling by reason of the great loss of life with which it was attended. The whaling fleet reached Point Barrow early 274 THE SEA ROVERS in August, 1876, and began whaling. Strong currents and constantly moving ice made work difficult from the first, and in the end the pack suddenly closed in upon the fleet. Four vessels made their escape, but the rest were carried slowly away towards the north- ward, great jams at the same time choking up every avenue leading to the south. With cold weather fast approaching, it was plainly im- possible to release the ships from their icy prison. A majority of the masters resolved to take to the boats as the only chance for escape, but five of the captains, with their crews, hoping against hope, refused to leave their ships. Progress over the ice was slow and painful. With infinite labor the boats would be hauled for a mile or so over the ice and then the men would return for the pro- visions and clothing they had taken from the ships. At night they crawled under the up- turned boats and slept as best they could on the ice. Late in the evening of the third day land was reached, and after resting and dry- ing their clothes the captains decided to push WHALERS OF THE ARCTIC SEA 275 on at once to the ships lying below Point Barrow. At the end of a week, exhausted, half -frozen and starving, they reached this refuge, and were kindly received by their fellow captains. The men were divided among the several ships, and as soon as the wind opened the ice the return voyage began. When the Golden Gate was reached, the last piece of meat was in the copper and the last loaf of bread in the oven. Out of a fleet of twenty vessels, twelve had been sunk or abandoned, with a loss of over $800,000. On the southward journey over the ice, two of the captains be- thought them of some valuable furs they had left behind, and decided to return for them. They made the trip in safety and had a warm welcome from those who had remained on the ships, but the latter turned a deaf ear to their earnest appeals to return with them, and the two captains again pushed southward alone. Since that hour nothing has been seen or heard of the ships or of the 150 men who refused to leave them. In the silence 276 THE SEA ROVERS and darkness of the long Arctic winter they perished and gave no sign. How passed their final hours? A grisly and gruesome story which all whalers tell offers a partial answer to this question. Many years ago Captain Warrens, of the whaler Greenland, while ly- ing becalmed among icebergs, sighted a dis- mantled and apparently deserted vessel. The boat's crew sent off to the stranger found the deck deserted; but seated at a table in the cabin was the corpse of a man covered with green, damp mould. A pen was still clutched in the stiffened hand, and on the table lay a log-book containing this last entry : "We have now been enclosed in the ice seventeen days. The fire went out yesterday and our master has been trying ever since to kindle it again, without success. His wife died this morning. There is no relief." The corpse of another man was found on the floor, and in one of the cabin berths lay the dead body of a woman. The corpse of the cabin-boy crouched at the foot of the WHALERS OF THE ABCTIC SEA 277 gangway. Scattered about the forecastle lay the dead bodies of the crew. The, ship was barren of fuel or food. It had been frozen in the ice thirteen years. Perhaps in similar manner this later Arctic mystery may yet find startling solution. There have been few whalers lost during the last twenty years. This has been due to the gradual introduction, since 1880, of steam- whalers, which act as tugs to the sailing ships when in danger, and to the constant presence in the Arctic of one or more revenue cutters, which render efficient aid every season, and convey to San Francisco the crews of such vessels as are lost — the Corwin on one of its cruises saving an entire fleet from destruc- tion. With these extra safeguards, the trade would doubtless have speedily recovered from the disasters I have described, but for the gradual disappearance of the whale itself. Each year, the whales, to escape pursuit, push still farther into the polar ice-caps, and each year the number caught decreases. The an- nual product of bone and oil has now fallen 278 THE SEA EOVERS to less than a million and a half of dollars, and new whaling grounds mnst soon be found or a great industry abandoned. Already the British whalers are turning their attention to the south polar region. Should whales prove plentiful there, the Yankees will be sure to follow in the footsteps of the English, and the energy and capital long expended in the far north will be diverted, for a term of years at least, to the other end of the world. THE END A NOBLE COMPANY OF ADVENTURERS BT RUFUS ROCKWELL WILSON UNDER THE ABOVE TITLE IS BEING PREPARED A COMPANION VOLUME TO "THE SEA ROVERS." THE OPENING CHAPTER HAS TO DO WITH THE AN- CIENT AND PICTURESQUE HUDSON BAY FUR COMPANY, AND OTHER ROMANTIC AND PERILOUS PURSUITS DEALT WITH IN SUBSEQUENT CHAPTERS ARE THOSE OF THE GOLD HUNTER, THE COWBOY, THE OILMAN, THE LUMBERMAN, THE MAKER OF STEEL, THE COAL MINER, THE RAILROAD BUILDER, THE CANA- DIAN MOUNTED POLICE, AND THE TEXAS RANGER. THE NEW VOLUME PROM- ISES, LIKE ITS COMPANION, TO GIVE DELIGHT TO BOYS OF ALL AGES. IT WILL BE ISSUED IN THE FALL OF 1907, BY B. W. DODGE & CO. 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