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Acorn Archive
Hearts of Oak
Captain J L Vivian Millett
Part 6
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I next
put in a period of study at Maxwell's Academy in the Minories for my
examination for second mate. The navigation part of the examination in those
days was a very simple affair; indeed, any fool could do it, as it only covered
an ordinary “day's work”. The seamanship side of the examination, however, was
extremely stiff. It was generally taken by Captain Steele, who demanded a very
high standard in a candidate before he would pass him. He thought nothing of
failing a man if he was not perfectly sure of his ground, and had a good try at
catching me tripping. After putting me through a test for box-hauling a ship,
he said “Oh, you would, would you?” at one point in my explanation, and, if I
had not known by repute what kind of man he was, he might have made me waver.
However, I stuck to my guns, and replied “Yes, I would, sir” “Well, that's all
right!” was his comment; and I passed. And a proud man I was when I received
the blue ticket entitling me to be granted my certificate.
So here
I was at last a fully-fledged second mate; twenty years old, five foot ten in
height, eleven stone eight in my birthday suit, and without an ounce of
superfluous flesh on my body. I only wish I were as fit physically now as I was
at that time. I was as hard as iron, my muscles were fully developed, and I
was, I think, stronger than most young fellows of my age.
The next
thing was to find a berth, which was as hard to come by in those days as it is
now. Naturally my thoughts turned to a second mate's job in a sailing ship, and
with that end in view I betook myself to the East India Docks.
A ship
called the ONEIDA rather took my fancy. She was a large vessel, which had
formerly been a steamer. I marched up the gangway with all the assurance in the
world, and was greeted by a stout, elderly man in carpet slippers with the
inquiry “What do you want?” “Is the captain aboard?” I asked. “ I am the
captain.” “Do you want a second mate, sir?” I continued. “You've got a damn
cheek,” said he, looking me up and down, “to think you can go as second mate in
a ship like this.” “I should not apply if I didn't think I was capable of it,”
quoth I, to which he rudely replied “You'd better go home to your mammy! I can
get extra masters to sign on as third mates, and glad of the chance!” This made
me lose my temper, and I retorted “They must be darned hard up, that's all!”
The skipper made one jump in my direction, but I was down the gangway like a
streak of light.
I gave
myself time to cool down a bit, and then had another shot. This time the ship I
selected was a pretty little barque called the BOADICEA of about six hundred
tons register. She looked like a toy ship beside the big ONEIDA, which must
have been of considerably over 2,000 tons. I went on board, and seeing nobody
about went to the cabin and knocked on the door. A woman answered my knock. “Is
the captain aboard?” I asked. “What do you want?” she inquired.
I didn't
see what business it was of hers; however, I replied, “ I want to see the
captain.” “What for?” she asked again. “I want to know whether he wants a
second mate.” “Have you been second mate before?” she asked. I said I hadn't,
so she said at once, “Well, you won't do.” By this time I was getting a bit
rattled, and I retorted, “That's for the captain to decide, not you!” “Let me
tell you, young man,” said the good lady, “that I have as much say as my
husband when it comes to taking on officers!” With which she banged the cabin
door in my face!
I went
away wondering what the sea was coming to.
I
decided that it was no good tramping the docks in quest of a berth, but
resolved to try my luck at the London offices. Day after day I spent in calling
on the different shipowners, and at last I got a telegram telling me to call at
a certain office at once. I lost no time in answering the summons, and learned
that they wanted a second mate for the four-master BUCKINGHAM. The captain
interviewed me, and apparently took a fancy to me, for when I refused to accept
the wage of £4 a month, which I found was all the job was worth, he spent over
an hour trying to get me to change my mind. I was more than a little tempted,
for I liked the ship and he seemed an exceedingly decent chap, but I valued my
services at £5 a month at least, and could not bring my pride to climb down.
Amongst
my mother's friends was a steamship owner, who, hearing that I was looking for
a job, sent for me and offered me a berth in one of his steamers. He told me
that he could not give me a second mate's job straight away and his ships did
not carry third officers; but he would arrange to sign me on as third mate,
provided I took on the duties of boatswain. The wages were only £5 a month, but
if I pleased the captain I should soon be promoted to second mate. I wanted to
stay in sail, but as I naturally did not want to go on indefinitely living on
my mother, I decided to accept the offer.
I was
given a letter to the captain of the S.S. GUILDFORD appointing me as third mate
and boatswain. I went down to Penarth, where the ship was lying, by train, and
arrived there about five o'clock in the evening. I went aboard the ship at
once, and, never having been in a steamer in my life, I thought her a splendid
vessel. As a matter of fact, she was of only 1,475 tons register, and although
an ocean-going steamer was much smaller than many of the coasting vessels of
the present day. I found an old man in uniform pottering about on deck, so I
told him what I wanted. He told me that he was the chief officer, and that the
captain was aboard and I had better go and see him. I went to the cabin and the
steward showed me in to the captain. He was a man of about thirty-eight, with a
fair beard, five foot eight or so in height, and with a tremendous chest. He
came from Sunderland. I found out afterwards that he was reckoned as the toughest
nut of all the skippers hailing from that port, and on that account was
nicknamed “Bully
Pringle”.
He could not speak without qualifying every other word with a more or less
sanguinary adjective, which I have had to represent by means of substitutes in writing
down his remarks. I presented him with the letter from the owners, which he
read, and at once said “I don't want any sanguinary third mate. I want a
bos'n.” “I'm quite prepared to act in that capacity,” I said. “H'm! The bos'n,
let me tell you, is the hardest-working man on board in my ship. He's not only
got to work himself, he's got to show the men an example.” “I have been
accustomed to hard work, sir,” I replied truthfully. “Can you use your fists?”
he asked. “Well, I think I can hold my own, sir,” I said modestly. “Thinking is
no ruddy use to me. The man I want as bos'n has got to be able to down any man
in the blinking ship, except me!” “Well, I will do my best, sir” I assured him.
“That's no ruddy good! You've got to do more than your best in my ship.” I
again assured him that I would try, and apparently that satisfied him, for he
told me to get ready and go ashore with him. I put my things into a big empty
two-bunk berth under the bridge, next to the carpenter's cabin. After my
quarters as an apprentice, it seemed to me quite sumptuous, although I
afterwards found that, being just opposite the stokehold door, it was not only
very noisy but very hot and dirty.
I then
went along and told the steward to let the captain know I was ready, and presently
out he came and we went ashore. We took a bus into Cardiff, and our first port
of call there was the Imperial Hotel. The captain, turning to me, asked me what
I would take to drink. “A glass of beer, sir” I replied; when, to my great
astonishment, he flew into a tremendous rage. “Who the hell are you sir-ing?”
he demanded. “Haven't you got enough blooming sense to know that when we are on
shore we are equals? But, by Gad, when we step on board the ship again, if you
give me any blinking back chat there'll be holy red murder!”.
We spent
the evening together, and the whole of the time he kept on bragging about his
fighting powers, and how every man he hit had to be taken to hospital, as with the
very small hands upon which he plumed himself, and the powerful muscles behind
them, he claimed that he drove a hole through a man when he struck him! As a
matter of fact, in the course of the voyages I made with him I never saw him
strike anyone who was not too drunk to defend himself. At the same time he
certainly lived up to his reputation of being “Bully Pringle” in other ways,
and every man who sailed with him was afraid to give him a back answer. It just
shows how successful bluff sometimes is.
Pringle
was a holy terror to those who were physically his inferiors. One voyage we had
a steward who was rather a poor specimen of humanity, and Pringle used to haze
him most unmercifully.
I heard
Pringle one day call the steward, who happened at the time to be on deck, and
so, of course, did not hear. I shouted out to him, and told him the captain
wanted him, and from my room, which commanded a good view of the after saloon,
I saw the steward come in through one door just as Pringle came in through the
other, lathering his hands with a cake of soap. He was in a
devil of
a temper, and demanded of the steward, of course with all the usual adjectives,
why he didn't come when he was called, at the same time letting fly the cake of
soap, which caught the steward fair and square in the eye with a smack that
could have been heard fifty yards away. The steward let out a terrific yell,
and no wonder ; and Pringle hastily retired, afraid for once that he had gone a
bit too far. However, the result was no worse than one of the loveliest black
eyes I have ever seen.
Another
time I happened to see from my berth, to my great amazement, Pringle with a
paper in his hand from which he was sprinkling dust and dirt all over the floor
of the after cabin. I had hardly time to wonder what he was at when he went to
the door and yelled out “Steward!” in a voice which as usual could be heard all
over the ship on a calm day. The steward came running along, and Pringle,
catching hold of him by the scruff of his neck, dragged him into the cabin and
tried to rub his nose on the floor which he had just been strewing with dust,
at the same time using the most fearful language because, so he said, he hadn't
done his ruddy work properly! Of course the captain's treatment of the steward
soon became known, and the poor devil became the butt of the ship, every one
making fun of him in the sure knowledge that he couldn't retaliate.
One day,
however, the engineers' mess-boy started to cheek him. The boy being only a
weakly-looking stripling of sixteen, the steward thought that for once he could
get a bit of his own back, and very soon they came to blows. It was always
customary to allow members of the crew to fight it out, so we all stood round
to see fair play, and for a few seconds it looked as if the steward were going
to
hammer
the life out of the boy. Then the boy got in a lucky blow which dazed the
steward, and followed that up with a regular shower of punches, positively
crying with fear the whole time. We all stood round roaring with laughter, for
it was the funniest of sights to see the boy getting the better of his opponent
with the tears streaming down his cheeks.
As third
mate and bos'n it was my duty to relieve the bridge while the other officer had
his meal with the captain. One day, after being relieved by the officer of the
watch so that I might go below to get my supper, I found the skipper sitting in
his place. A tin of sardines was open on the table, and, having a very healthy
appetite and being also particularly fond of sardines, I had helped myself to
one, two, three, four, and was just going to take a fifth, when the old man,
who had apparently been watching me, yelled out “Now then, you ------! What the blazes do you think you're doing?
Sardines are meant for a ruddy relish, not for a ruddy feed!” So I had to be
content with the four I had already secured.
Another
time we were all having supper with the skipper in port, consisting of Irish
stew. He was in a beast of a temper, and was simply shovelling out the stew and
pushing our plates across to us as rudely as he could. By the time he came to
himself the stuff in the dish was getting low, and with the tablespoon he was
using he fished up, not, as he expected, a nice piece of juicy meat, but a
filthy clay pipe half full of tobacco. Fortunately none of us had eaten any.
The skipper let out a yell for the steward, and told him to go along to the
galley and fetch the ruddy cook. While we were waiting for the cook to appear
Pringle poured the stew from the plates back into the dish, and when the cook
arrived, wreathed in smiles, he held up the pipe and asked him what the devil
he meant by serving it up in the dinner. “Dat, why, dat my pipe, sah” said the
cook. “I put dat pipe down, an' couldn' say whar I put him, sah!” “Well, you put
it in the blinking stew!” roared Pringle; and with that he took up the dish and
let drive. The cook saw what was coming and ducked just in time, but the stew
went all over the cabin floor. The “doctor” tried to bolt, but Pringle, backed
up for once by the rest of us, for we were all pretty wild over the spoiling of
our supper, made him go down on his hands and knees and clean up the mess there
and then, and finished up by throwing him out of the cabin and booting him
along the deck.
It was a
good thing that in those days we did not see what went on inside the galley,
for I am quite sure that if we had done so we should never have relished
anything that came out of it. Even the men complained, but they got precious
little satisfaction if they went along to the galley to threaten the cook. He
used to arm himself with a dipper full of boiling water, and then ask them what
they wanted, the dipper all the time trembling in his hand ready to discharge
its scalding contents; and although they weren't afraid of Slushy, they were
afraid of his dipper. Apart from his cooking, though, he was a universal
favourite, as he had plenty to say for himself and had a rich fund of humour.
Pringle
always carried a painter, as he preferred the bulwarks and bulkheads to be panelled
and grained ; some of the painters were quite artists at their work, and many
shipmasters used to come on board solely for the purpose of seeing the
beautiful way in which the ship was decorated. For several voyages we had a
painter who had a wooden stump in place of his right leg, and it was simply
marvellous how that man managed to get round the deck. He had at one time been
an able seaman, and after he lost his leg he became a painter's labourer
ashore. He soon mastered his new trade and became a skilled workman, and his
love of the sea made him jump at the job of painter on board the GUILDFORD.
He had a
yarn about the way he lost his leg, which ran as follows - Coming aboard his
ship late one evening when he was more than half-seas over, he got into his
bunk with nothing but his shirt on, it being in India and the weather being
hot. He was the proud possessor of a revolver, which, since fire-arms were not
allowed to be carried by' members of the crew, he had hidden under his
mattress. While lying in his bunk he was carrying on a drunken sort of
conversation with the other men, which happened to turn on the mosquitoes,
which as usual were buzzing about the forecastle in swarms. Presently, as he
was lying with his legs drawn up, he saw a mosquito settle on his knee,
whereupon he pulled out the revolver from underneath him, and said “You watch
me fix that blinkin' mosquito!” They only laughed at him, thinking no doubt
that he was fooling with an unloaded revolver; but he fired, and, whether he
shot the mosquito or not, he smashed his kneecap to such an extent that he had
to have his leg amputated, and was known ever after as “the man who shot the
mosquito!”
I have
no doubt said enough to show that Pringle's manners were not, to say the least,
polished. When we arrived at Malta one voyage, he was very busy in the fore
cabin writing to his owners when the steward interrupted him to tell him that a
gentleman wished to see him. “Show him in” growled Pringle. His visitor entered
and said “Good morning” and without troubling to look up Pringle grunted “Good
morning. Take a sanguinary chair!” The gentleman, not being accustomed to such
manners, exclaimed “Excuse me, captain, but you do not. seem to know who I am.
I am your agent!” “Oh, you are, are you?” replied Pringle, going on with his
writing. “That's all right ! Take two ruddy chairs!” Which so amused the agent,
that he laughed and took the incident in good part.
I had
begun to have my misgivings as to the wisdom of the step I was taking; however,
I could hardly draw back at this stage, so next day I signed on, as did the
rest of the crew, and the following morning we proceeded to sea.
The
captain was up on the bridge with the pilot, and he was cursing the pilot, the
tugboat, and the waterman with a voice that could be heard half a mile away.
When one of the crew was slow in putting a fender over the side between the
ship and the dock gates, the skipper's language was a revelation, for he swore
for a couple of minutes on end without once repeating himself!
Seeing
what kind of behaviour the skipper wanted from his officers, and believing in
the advice, “When in Rome do as Rome does” I started to take a leaf out of the
captain's book as regarded language, and rather to my surprise found the men
took it just as quietly from me as they did from the skipper, whereupon, being
still, please remember, very young, I began to fancy myself as a “bucko.” Of
course in those days every steamship sailor had been in sail for many years,
and had got so accustomed to hard words, hard treatment, and rigid discipline
that it was but seldom that a man would turn round and raise any objection to
whatever he was told to do, or to the manner in which he was addressed.
Moreover, as I always carried a set of boxing-gloves, which the men could see
hanging in my cabin, they jumped to the conclusion that I was a regular
fighting man, and for my part I fear I gloried in the reputation and really
thought it was true.
As soon as
the ship was in Barry Roads and the mooring-ropes stowed away and hatches
battened down watches were set, but I, being boatswain, was, of course, on duty
all day. The ship was covered with about two inches of coal dust, and the first
job was to wash her down, which I had to do with the three men who were
available out of the watch. I took the hose and the men their brooms and mops,
and we soon had her washed down fore-and-aft, so that I could get an idea of
what she would look like when she was free of the dirt left behind after
loading a coal cargo. She was built on ugly lines but to the highest
specifications for a cargo boat, which were equal, I should think, to those for
a first-class liner in these days. All the ports along the side, and in the forecastle
as well, together with the name, were of brass, and were kept highly polished.
The main rail was of teak, and altogether the ship was beautifully finished
off. The cabin accommodation was aft, and was on the old sailing-ship plan of
having two cabins, both about ten feet by fifteen, with the captain's room and
bathroom, on the starboard side, and the first and second officers' and the
steward's cabins on the port side.
We were
bound for Bombay, and the crew and officers soon settled down to the routine of
what was perhaps one of the hardest-worked steamers afloat. By the time we got
to Port Said the deck was yachtlike in its cleanliness, the planking as white
and glistening as holystone and caustic soda would make them, and as we passed
through the Canal we could see the crews of other steamers gazing in admiration
at the immaculate appearance we presented.
In those
days every steamer carried square sail. A steamer with three masts was
generally barque-rigged, if with four she was square-rigged on three ;
two-masted steamers were either brig- or brigantine-rigged. In our case we were
brigantine-rigged with double topsails, but no topgallant sails ; whenever the
sails could draw, no matter how light the wind, there was “merry hell” from the
skipper if everything was not set, and when it came on to blow we had to hang
on to every stitch just as did the hard-driven sailing ships. Going into port
the sails had to be harbour stowed, pipeclayed covers with black gaskets put
over them, and the yards squared by lifts and braces. When we passed through
the Canal, of course the yards had to be braced up, and with pipeclayed awning
right fore-and-aft the ship, we were able to show other ships that, although
ours was such an ugly brute as regarded lines, we could give points in some
respects to better-looking vessels.
Port
Said, in those days, was a comparatively small place confined to one side of
the harbour. It had the reputation, and it deserved it, of being the most
immoral place in the world, and many a seaman had been enticed into a
disorderly house and murdered, or at any rate never heard of again.
We had
the remarkable experience of being moored alongside a Russian steamer conveying
prisoners to Siberia. When we went alongside her we wondered why there were
armed sentries all over the deck, and through the portholes, which were obliged
to be kept open, we saw that the 'tween decks were crowded with men who were
chained to the deck. The smell coming through the portholes was horrible. It
showed what a state of misery and filth the poor wretches must have been in. We
heard afterwards that they were treated worse than dumb beasts; that they died
in shoals, and were thrown overboard almost before the breath left their
bodies. Poor devils, death must have been a relief to them, for they had only
forced labour to look forward to for the rest of their lives; while as for
those in charge of them, every one that died simply meant one less to look
after. We were all glad when we moved into the Canal, and only the haunting
memory of them remained.
The
Canal at that time was very narrow, with wider spaces, called stations, every
five miles. Electric lighting on board ship was not yet general, therefore
there was no navigation of the Canal after sundown, every ship having to tie up
in the station that was nearest at the time. Consequently, although the Canal
is only eighty miles long, it took a ship two days to navigate it. It was
necessary to go dead slow, and as our ship was a brute to steer we would very
often ricochet from one bank to the other, causing much dismay on the part of
the pilot and a flood of bad language from Pringle to the helmsman.
Raymond
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