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Illustrator: Richard Westall

THE SHIPWRECK

BY WILLIAM FALCONER

EMBELLISHED WITH ENGRAVINGS FROM THE DESIGNS OF RICH?. WESTALL R.A.

LONDON; PRINTED FOR JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY. 1819.

THE SHIPWRECK;

BY WILLIAM FALCONER.

LONDON: PRINTED FOR JOHN SHARPE, PICCADILLY, BY C. WHITTINGHAM, CHISWICK.

CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS.

The SHIPWRECK is one of those happy productions in which talent is seen in so exquisite adaptation to the nature of the subject, that it is difficult to determine whether the author is the most indebted to his subject, or the subject to the author. No one who had not passed through the circumstances which Falconer describes, could have painted them as he has done; and of the comparatively few who have had the opportunity of drinking in the fearful inspiration of such scenes, and survived to tell of them, Falconer is the first who appears to have possessed the genius requisite to retain and embody the impression, with the vigour of imagination and the fidelity of memory. It was not more necessary that he should be a poet, than that he should be a seaman. He was eminently both; and the Poem is as perfect in every technical excellence, as it is in respect to the simplicity of its plan, the classical elegance of its composition, and the pathos of its narrative. It is altogether a unique production.

Fresh-water critics venture out of their element in entering upon a minute examination of such a poem as this. The care with which it appears to have been elaborated, has, however, left little for the invidious notice of criticism. In a few instances, the hand of correction has been injudiciously applied in the editions of the Poem subsequent to its first appearance; it is conjectured, that some of the alterations in the third edition, which are of this nature, are to be attributed to his having left the final revision to his friend Mallet, who, although a poet, was not a seaman. If the style of the Poem is faulty in any respect, it is in that of the too ambitious phraseology, by which it seems to have been Falconer's effort to sustain the epic dignity of the narrative. Into this fault the models of the day were adapted to seduce any young writer, and the versification he adopted, presents a constant temptation to artificial and inverted forms of expression. Thus, for instance, to weigh anchor, is paraphrased in the following line:--

"Or win the anchor from its dark abode."

Short and simple are the annals of poor ARION'S history. He was born at Edinburgh, about the year 1730. His father was a poor but industrious barber, who had to maintain a large family, under the distressing circumstance of all his children, with the single exception of William, being either deaf or dumb. Reading English, writing, and a little arithmetic, comprised the whole of Falconer's education, although he afterwards acquired some knowledge of the French, Spanish, and Italian languages, and, it is added, even of the German. When very young, he entered on board a merchant vessel at Leith, in which he served an apprenticeship. He was afterwards servant to Campbell, the author of Lexiphanes, when purser of a ship, who is stated to have taken considerable pains in improving the mind of the young seaman, and to have subsequently felt a pride in boasting of his scholar. At what time the calamitous event occurred, which furnished the subject of the SHIPWRECK, has not been ascertained: he was then, it appears, employed in the Levant trade. He continued in the merchant service till 1762. In that year, the SHIPWRECK made its first appearance, in quarto, dedicated to his Royal Highness Edward, Duke of York, who had hoisted his flag as rear-admiral of the blue, on board the Princess Amelia, of eighty guns, attached to the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. The Poem immediately took with the public, and Falconer, having, as it is said, at the Duke's recommendation, quitted the merchant service for the royal navy, was soon after rated a midshipman on board the Royal George.

At the peace of 1763, the Royal George was paid off, and Falconer, in the course of the same year, was appointed purser of the Glory frigate. Soon after this, he married a young lady of the name of Hicks, who survived him. From the Glory, he was, in 1767, appointed to the Swiftsure.

In 1773, a black was examined before the East India Directors, who affirmed that he was one of five persons who had been saved from the wreck of the Aurora, and that she had been cast away on a reef of rocks off Mocoa.

To these particulars, for which the public are chiefly indebted to the assiduous researches of the Rev. James Stanier Clarke, it may be added, on the same authority, that Falconer was, in his person, about five feet seven inches in height, of a thin light make, hard featured, and weather-beaten, of blunt and aukward manners, but cheerful, kind, and generous. He was, however, inclined to be satirical, and delighted in controversy: strange characteristics of a man who was a thorough seaman and a poet!

THE SHIPWRECK.

INTRODUCTION.

INTRODUCTION.

FIRST CANTO:

THE SCENE OF WHICH LIES NEAR THE CITY OF CANDIA.

TIME,--ABOUT FOUR DAYS AND AN HALF.

ARGUMENT.

THE SHIPWRECK

You behold me, with my shirt-sleeves rolled up, faced by a heap of twenty plates, twenty forks, twenty knives and twenty spoons, all urgently requiring washing. Were these my whole task I should not shrink. They would be nicely polished-off long ere one-fifteen arrived--the time when I should leave for my own meal in the orderlies' mess. But there are two far more serious opponents waiting to be subdued--the dinner-tin and the pudding-basin. This pair are hateful beyond words. Their memory will for ever haunt me, a spectral disillusionment to spoil the relish of every repast I may consume in the years that are ahead.

The dinner-tin was a rectangular box some three feet long, twenty inches wide and six inches deep. It was made of solid metal, was fitted with a false bottom to contain hot water, and was divided internally into three compartments to hold meat, vegetables and duff. These viands were loaded into the tin at the hospital's central kitchen. I had naught to do with the cookery--which I may mention always seemed to me to be excellent. My sole concern was with the helping-out of the food to the patients and the restoration of the dinner-tin to its shelf in the central kitchen. For unless I restored that tin in a faultless state of cleanliness, the sergeant in charge of the central kitchen would require my blood. The tin's number would betray me. The sergeant needed not to know my name: all he had to do, on discovering the questionable tin, was to glance at its number and then send for the orderly of the ward with a corresponding number.

He was a sergeant whose aspect could be very daunting. I never had to come before him on the subject of a dirty dinner-tin. But he and I had some small passages concerning "specials" . Sometimes the necessary forms for the specials had been incorrectly made out by a Sister with no head for army accuracy in minor clerical details. Thereafter it was my unlucky place to see the sergeant, and put the matter straight with him. I have survived those encounters. I have survived them with an enhanced respect for the sergeant and the organisation of his large and by no means simple department. There were moments, nevertheless, when I approached his presence with a sinking heart. For if I failed to "get round" him in the matter of coaxing another special for a patient, there was Sister to placate on my return to the ward; and it was quite impossible to persuade Sister that she could have made a mistake with her diet sheets, or, if she had, that it was of any consequence.

The dinner-tin was somewhat larger than the sink in which I was supposed to wash it. It was also very heavy. When full of food, and its false bottom charged with hot water, I could only just lift it, and my progress down the ward, carrying it from the trolley in the corridor to the ward-kitchen, was a perilous and perspiring shuffle. As soon as all the patients had been served I placed any left-over slices of meat in the larder: these would be eaten at tea. Then I drained out the hot water from the false bottom. Then I ran hot water from the geyser tap into the now empty meat, vegetable and duff compartments, and gave them a hurried swill: this to rid them of the pestilent dregs of fatty material which would otherwise have dried and glued themselves to the floor of the tin. The latter had now to be put on one side, for I must be back in the ward attending to my diners. Only when they had finished their meal, and their bed-tables had been removed, folded up and placed neatly behind each bed, could I tackle the tin in earnest.

I abhor dabbling in grease; but life is full of abhorrent dilemmas which must be endured; and the interior of that dinner-tin somehow got itself cleaned, every day, in the long run. During the early part of any given week I was almost happy over the job. For Monday was "Dry Store" day. On Monday, and on Monday only--and you were helpless for the remainder of the week if you forgot the rule--you could obtain, on presentation of a chit, blacklead for the stoves, metal-polish for the brass, rags for cleaning the floor, floor-polish, one box of matches, bath-brick, soft soap, and--soda. It is an extraordinary chemical, soda. Before I became a ward orderly I had no idea of the remarkable properties of soda. A handful of soda in boiling water, and behold the grease dissolve meekly from the nastiest dinner-tin! It was miraculous. When a pitying scrub-lady first showed me the trick I thought that all my troubles were at an end. Soda made the ward-kitchen seem like heaven. Alas, the supply of soda considered sufficient by the Dry Store authorities never lasted beyond Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday the dinner-tin had to be cleaned out not by alkaline agency, but by sheer slogging hard labour. And when at last I stood it on edge to dry, and thought to go off duty with a clear conscience, I generally found that I had overlooked the waiting pudding-basin.

I need scarcely say that sandpaper was not supplied by the deities of the Dry Store. Sandpaper did not come within their purview. It had no recognised use in hospital. Therefore it did not exist. But, observing that a succession of metal pudding-basins would be an insupportable prospect without sandpaper, I laid in a stock of sandpaper, paying for the same out of my own private purse. It was a cheap investment. Never have earnings of mine been better spent. Moreover, having once hit on the notion of giving myself a lift illegitimately, so to speak, I added to the smuggling-in of sandpaper a secret purchase of soda. Except that our scrub-ladies, each and all, discovering that the Dry Store's allowance of this priceless chemical had at last apparently been generous, caused it to fly at a disconcerting pace, and as a result sometimes left me short of it, my career as a washer-up afterwards became more comfortable.

I shall never like washing-up. In the communal households of the future I shall heave coal, sift cinders, dig potatoes, dust furniture or scour floors--any task will be mine which, though it makes me dirty, does not make me greasily dirty. But if I must wash-up, if I must study the idiosyncrasies of cold fat, treacly plates, frying-pans which have sizzled dripping-toast on the gas-ring, frozen gravy, and pudding-basins with burnt milk-skins filmed to their sides, I shall be comparatively undismayed. For sandpaper is not yet abolished; and soda--although I hear its price has risen several hundred per cent.--is still cheaper than, say, diamonds.

A "HUT" HOSPITAL

People have curious ideas of the kind of building which would make a good war hospital. "The So-and-So Club in Pall Mall," I have been told, "should have been commandeered long ago. Ideal for hospital purposes. Of course some of the M.P. members brought influence to bear, and the War Office was choked off...." And so forth.

It would surprise me to hear of anything that the War Office was held back from doing if it wanted to do it. Perhaps the least likely obstructionist to be successful in this project would be a club-frequenting M.P. The War Office has taken exactly and precisely what it chose--even when it would have been better to choose otherwise. In this matter of commandeering buildings for hospitals it may or may not have acted with wisdom; but at least it has been safe in avoiding the advice of the individual who jumps to the conclusion that just any pleasingly-situated edifice will do, provided beds and nurses are shovelled into it in sufficient quantities.

Some years ago a number of public buildings were earmarked for hospital use in case of war. It may surprise the indignant patriots to learn that any preparations whatever were made prior to the outbreak in 1914. Nevertheless all kinds of preparations actually were made. Mistakes and miscalculations may have marred those preparations: the fact remains that, as far as the Territorial Medical Service was concerned, the authorities had merely to press a button and hospitals came into existence. Thus a number of institutions--mostly schools--found themselves ejected from their own roof-trees: found, in short, that the State is omnipotent in war-time and that sectional interests fade into insignificance compared with the interests of the safety of the commonwealth. Some conception of the promptness with which this paper scheme of Sir Alfred Keogh's materialised at the outbreak of war may be gathered from the simple statement that the building of which I myself write was an Orphans' Home on August 4th, 1914. At 6 a.m. on August 5th it was a military hospital.

The word "hut" suggests something casual, of the camping-out order: a shed knocked together with tin-tacks, doubtfully weather-proof and probably scamped by profiteering contractors. Of the huts provided at certain training centres this may have been true. The finely austere and efficient ranks of hut-wards which constitute the main part of the 3rd London General Hospital are the very antithesis of that picture. They may look flimsy. They were certainly put up at a remarkable pace. I myself witnessed the erection of the final fifty of them. An open field vanished in less than a month, and "Bungalow Town" appeared. You would have said that such speed meant countless imperfections of detail. No doubt some tinkerings and modifications were bound to follow, when the regiment of workmen, carpenters, engineers, drainage specialists, electricians, had vanished. But, in the long run, the ideal hospital remained--a hospital with which the So-and-So Club in Pall Mall, for all its luxuriousness, could never hope to compare.

There are still a dozen wards--used mostly for medical cases--in the Scottish baronial building. Its rooms, too, provide the Administration with offices. Its great Dining Hall is a splendid Receiving Ward for the sorting-out and clearance of newly-arrived convoys of patients. We should be poorly situated indeed if we had not our Scottish baronial main building to be the hub of the hospital's activities, or rather the handle from which springs the fan of the hospital's great extension--the huts. Approaching the hospital the visitor sees nothing of those huts. As he walks up the drive he flatters himself that he has reached his destination. He discovers his mistake when, at the inquiry bureau in the entrance, he is informed that the patient whom he has come to interview is in "C 13." He is advised to go down the passage on his left, turn to his right, turn to the left again and then again to the right--after which he had better seek a further re-direction. Launching himself optimistically on this voyage he learns, long ere he has attained his goal, that a modern war-hospital can hide a considerable extent of pedestrianism behind a comparatively short Scottish baronial frontage. He will be fortunate if five minutes' steady tramping brings him to the bedside of his friend in C 13.

Perhaps he will content himself in his footsoreness by noting that, to reach C 13, he has not had to go up or down any stairs. This is one of the beauties of the hut system. It consumes a big area, but it is all on one level--the ground level. The patient on crutches can go anywhere without fear of tripping, the patient in a wheeled chair can propel himself anywhere, the orderlies can push wheeled stretchers or dinner-wagons anywhere. Our visitor for C 13, having escaped from the back of the Scottish baronial building, emerges into a vista of covered corridors, wooden-floored, galvanised-iron roofed. It is a heartbreaking vista to the poor woman who has had no bus-fare and is burdened by a baby in arms. It is a vista which seems to have no end. Corridor branches out of corridor--A Corridor, B Corridor, C Corridor, D Corridor, each with its perspective of doors opening into wards; and shorter corridors leading to store-rooms and the like. But the patient or orderly who has dwelt in a hospital where, though distances are shorter, staircases are involved--or where every trifling coming-and-going of goods or stretchers necessitates the manipulation of a lift--blesses those level, smooth corridors, with their facile access to any ward, to operating theatres, kitchens, stores, X-ray room, massage department, etc., and their stepless exit into the open air.

Looked at from outside, a hut-ward is--to the aesthetic eye--a hideous structure. Knowing what it stands for, the science, the tenderness and the fundamental civilisation which it represents, we may descry, behind its stark geometrical outlines, a real nobility and beauty. Entering a typical hut-ward you behold thirty beds, fifteen on each side of the room. Between each pair of beds is a locker in which the patient stows his belongings. In the central aisle of the room are the Sister's writing-table, certain other tables, chairs, and two coke stoves for heating purposes in winter. The floor is carpetless, and maintained in a meticulous state of high gloss by means of daily polishings. At a height of a few feet from the floor, the asbestos-lined walls cease and become windows. There is no gap in the continuous line of windows all down each side of the ward--a special type of window which, even when open, declines to allow rain to enter. In consequence of these windows the ward is not only very well lit, but also airy and odourless. When all the windows are open the patient has the advantages of indoor comfort plus an outdoor atmosphere. At the end of the ward a covered verandah is spacious enough to take an extra couple of beds for those requiring completely open-air treatment.

The ward proper has certain additions: a kitchen with gas-stove and geyser; a sink-room with geyser and cleansing apparatus of special pattern; a bathroom with geyser; lavatories; a small room for the isolation of a patient on the danger-list; a linen-room; and cupboards. All these are packed neatly under that one rectangular corrugated roof which looked so ugly and so unpromising from outside.

Do not pity the wounded soldier because he is quartered in a "hut." The word sounds unattractive. But if it is the right kind of hut, he is in the soundest and most sanitary type of temporary hospital that the mind of man has yet devised. The rain-drops may rattle a shade noisily on the roof, the asbestos lining may be devoid of ornamentation, but as he lies in bed and contemplates that unadorned ceiling he is a deal better off than if he were gazing at the elaborate cornices of the So-and-So Club's grandiose smoking-lounge in Pall Mall.

FROM THE "D" BLOCK WARDS

If you walk up the corridor at half-past four on certain afternoons of the week you will meet a mob of patients trooping from their wards to the concert-room. Being built of wood and corrugated iron, the corridor is an echoing cave of noises. It echoes the tramp of feet--and army-pattern boots were not soled for silence. It echoes the thud-thud of crutches. It echoes the slurred rumble of wheeled chairs and stretcher-trollies. But, above all, at half-past four on concert days it echoes happy talk and chaff and boisterous laughter.

As often as not, the loudest talk, the cheeriest chaff, the most spontaneous laughter, emanate from the blue-clad stalwarts who have mustered from the "D" Block wards.

"D" Block contains the wards for eye-wound cases.

Here they come, a string of them, mostly with bandages round their heads. The leading man owns one good eye--a twinkling eye--an eye of mischief--an eye for the girls. Behind him, in single file, and in step with him, march a gang of patients each with his hand on the shoulder of the man in front. Tramp, tramp! Their tread is purposely thunderous on the bare boards of the corridor. They sing as they advance. It is a ragtime chorus whose most memorable line runs, "You never seem to kiss me in the same place twice." A jaunty lilt, to be sure, both in tune and in rhythm. Tramp, tramp! The one-eyed leader swerves round a corner, roaring the refrain. His followers swerve too. Suddenly the Matron is encountered, emerging from her room. "Fine afternoon, Matron!" The leader interrupts his chant to utter this hearty greeting. And, with one voice, "Fine afternoon, Matron!" exclaim his followers. But they do not turn their heads. Each with his hand resting on the shoulder of the man in front they go steadily on, towards the concert-room, with an odd intentness, glancing neither to one side nor the other. For though, at their leader's cue, they have hailed the Matron, they have not seen her. They are blind.

The spectacle of men--particularly young men--who have given their sight for their country is, to most observers, a moving one. Melancholy are the reflections of the visitor who meets, for the first time, a promenading party of our blind patients. It is the plain truth, nevertheless, that the blind men themselves are far from melancholy. One of the rowdiest characters we ever had in the hospital was totally blind. The blind men's wards are notoriously amongst the least sedate. I offer no explanation. I simply state the fact. I will fortify it by an anecdote.

It came to pass that eight complimentary tickets for a Queen's Hall matin?e were received by the Matron, who in due course allotted them to seven "D" Block patients. An orderly, detailed to take them to the hall, completed the octette. Corporal Smith, the orderly in question, recounted his adventures afterwards. "Never again," quoth he, "shall I jump at a matin?e job if there are blind chaps in the party. They're the deuce."

You must understand that we hospital orderlies regard the task of shepherding patients to an entertainment in town as an agreeable form of holiday. I have had some very pleasant outings of that sort myself. But not--I am thankful to recall, in the light of Corporal Smith's narrative--with blind men. One-legged men are often a sufficient care, in manoeuvring on and off omnibuses. Apparently helpless cripples have a marvellous gift for losing themselves, entering wrong trains, and generally escaping--as the hour for return draws nigh--from one's custody. And the city seems to be full of lunatics ready to supply alcohol or indigestible refreshments to the most delicate war-hospital inmates. Even with ordinary patients the orderly's afternoon excursion is sometimes not unfraught with anxiety. But blind patients, as Corporal Smith said, are the deuce.

Out of his party, four were totally blind, two could recognise dimly the difference between light and darkness, and one had a single good eye.

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