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"PIG-HEADED" SAILOR MEN

T. FISHER UNWIN, 1902

LONDON

Crossing from Holyhead to Ireland one night the captain of the steamer and myself, during an hour's talk on the bridge, found that we each had sailed in a certain Australian coasting steamer more than twenty years before--he as chief officer and I as passenger; and her shipwreck one Christmas Eye , which was attended by an appalling loss of life, led us to talk of "pig-headed" skippers generally. His experiences were large, and some of his stories were terrible even to hear, others were grotesquely humorous, and the memory of that particularly pleasant passage across a sea as smooth as a mill pond, has impelled me to retell some of the incidents I related to him of my own adventures with obstinate, self-willed, or incapable captains.

"Make it fifty," cried the master of the new ship, amid the cheers of his guests.

Rosser shook his head, and replied with apparent unconcern that ten pounds was enough for any one to lose. "But," he added, "don't think I'm going to race you. I'm just going to dodder along as usual."

We got underway first, and were just passing out between Sydney Heads under easy sail, when the brigantine overtook us, and passed us like a race-horse galloping past a trotting donkey. She presented a beautiful sight as she swept by with yards braced up sharp to a good south-east breeze, and every stitch of her brand-new canvas drawing. One of the officers had the bad manners to take up a coil of small line, and make a pretence of heaving it to us for a tow rope. Rosser looked on with an unmoved face, though our own mate made some strong remarks.

Rosser said to us at dinner--

"That brigantine will come to grief. She's overmasted, and the fellow who has her ought not to be trusted with her. He's going to make a mess of things."

Rosser was on deck, and told me that we were "going to get it hot from the N.E. before long;" and by four in the morning we were under topsails and lower courses only, the ship flying before a most unpleasant sea. I turned in again, and slept till daylight, when the second mate gave me a call.

"Come on deck and see something pretty."

The "something pretty" was the brigantine, which was in sight about a mile away on our lee bow. She was in a terrible mess. Her fore and main royal masts and topgallant masts and jibboom had apparently all been carried away together, and she was almost lying on her beam ends. We ran down to her, and saw that her crew were busy in cutting away the spars and sails alongside. All her boats were gone, and her for'ard deck house had started, and was working to and fro with every sea.

In less than half an hour the mate and six hands from the barque were on board, assisting the crew, cutting away the wire rigging and trimming the cargo, the shifting of which had nearly sent her to the bottom. I went with the boat to lend a hand, and the second mate of the brigantine told me that the young captain had refused to listen to the mate's suggestion to shorten sail, when the officer told him that the wind would certainly come away suddenly from the N.E. The consequence was that a furious squall took her aback, and had not the jibboom--and then the upper spars--carried away under the terrific strain, she would have gone to the bottom. The worst part of the business was that two poor seamen had been lost overboard.

"He's a pretty kind of man for a skipper if you like," said the second officer bitterly. "He ought to be hanged for pretending he's a sailorman. It's sheer murder to put such a jackass in command of a deep-water sailing ship."

After rendering all possible assistance to the brigantine, we left her about mid-day; and had been lying at anchor for two weeks in Nukualofa Harbour before she put in an appearance outside the reef. A native pilot went out in a canoe, but the captain haughtily declined his services, and would not even let him come on board--he wanted to show people that although he had never seen Naknalofa Harbour before, he could bring his ship in without a pilot. In less than half an hour, a swirling eddy caught the vessel, and earned her broadside on to the reef, where she would have been battered to pieces, had not our two boats gone to her assistance, and with great difficulty got her off again. Captain Rosser several times countermanded orders given by his chief officer--an experienced seaman--and bullied and "jawed" his crew in the most pompous and irritating manner, and finally when we succeeded in getting the vessel off the reef with the loss of her false keel and rudder, and were towing her into smooth water inside the reef, he came for'ard, and abruptly desired our chief mate to cease towing, as he meant to anchor.

"Anchor, and be hanged to you," replied our officer with angry contempt; "the kind of ship you ought to command is one that is towed by a horse along a path in the old country."

We cast off and left him to his own conceit and devices. He let go in less than five fathoms, paid out too much cable, and went stern first on to a coral patch, where he stuck for a couple of days, much to our delight.

Within six months this gentleman succeeded in getting the brigantine ashore on four occasions, and she had to return to Sydney to be repaired at a cost of ?1,700.

My next two experiences were with the pig-headed type. I had made an agreement with the master of a Fiji-owned vessel--also a brigantine--to convey myself and my stock of trade goods from an island in the Tokelau or Union Group to Yap, in the Caroline Islands in the North-west, where I intended starting a trading business. This captain was as good a seaman as ever trod a deck, and had had a rather long experience of the island trade, but a mule could not surpass him in obstinacy, as I was soon to learn, to my sorrow.

A week after leaving the Tokelaus, we dropped anchor on the edge of the reef of one of the Gilbert Group, to land supplies for a trader living there. The coast was very exposed to all but an easterly wind, and neither the mate nor myself liked the idea of anchoring at all. The skipper, however, brought his vessel close in to the roaring breakers on the reef, let go his anchor in six fathoms, and then neatly backed astern into blue water sixty fathoms deep. Here we lay apparently safe enough, for the time, the wind being easterly and steady.

"I wouldn't risk it if I were you," said the trader, who had come aboard in his own boat to "square up." "You can't depend on this easterly breeze holding all night, and it may come on squally from the west or south-west in a few hours, and take you unawares."

"Bosh!" was the reply. "Hoist the boats up, Mr. Laird, and tell the men to get supper."

"Very well, sir," replied the mate, none too cheerfully.

Just as the trader was going ashore, he said to me aside, quietly, "This little monkey-faced skipper is a blazing idiot" . "I told him again just now, that if the wind comes away from west or south-west, or even if it falls calm, he'll find he's caught, to a dead certainty. But he as good as told me to mind my own business."

Naturally enough I was anxious. I had on board trade goods which had cost ?1,100, and of course had not one penny of insurance on them. The brigantine, however, was well insured, though I do not impute this fact as being the cause of the captain's neglect of a sensible warning.

After supper, the captain turned in, while the mate and I, both feeling very uneasy, paced the deck till about nine o'clock, at which hour the wind had become perceptibly lighter, and the captain was called. He came on deck, trotted up and down in his pyjamas for a few minutes, sat on the rail, like a monkey on a fence, and then asked the mate snappishly what he was "scared about?"

The mate made no reply, and the captain was just going below again, when two fishing canoes, with four natives in each, came quite near us, both heading for the shore; and the skipper asked me to hail them and see if they had any fish to sell. I did so.

"No," was the reply; "we are going back again, because much rain and wind is coming from the westward, and we want to get over the reef before the surf becomes too great." Then one of them stood up and added--

"Why does not the ship go away quickly. This is a very bad place here when the wind and the sea come from the west. Your ship will be broken to pieces."

"What do they say?" inquired the little man.

I translated what they had said.

"Bosh, I say again," was the reply, "the glass has been as steady as a rock for the past three days," and then, to my intense anger, he added an insinuation that my fears had led me to deliberately misinterpret what the natives had said. The retort I made was of so practical a nature that the mate had to assist the skipper to his feet.

A quarter of an hour later, as the mate and I still walked the deck, discussing the captain's shortcomings, the wind died away suddenly, and then several of our native crew came aft, and said that a squall was coming up from the westward, and the mate, though neither he nor myself could then see any sign of it, went below and again called the captain.

He came on deck, with one hand covering his injured left optic, told me he would settle with me in the morning, and then took a long look astern, and there, certainly enough, was a long streak of black rising over the horizon. The mate stood by waiting his orders.

"It's not coming near us," said the little man more snappishly than ever, as he marched up and down the poop.

"I say it is," said Laird bluntly, "and I consider this ship will be ashore, if we don't slip and tow out a bit before it is too late."

The mate's manner had some effect on the obstinate little animal--"Oh, well, if there's such a lot of old women on board, I'll give in. Call the hands, and we'll heave up."

"Heave up!" echoed the mate in angry astonishment, "what's the use of trying to heave up now! That squall will be on us in ten minutes, and if we had an hour to spare, it would be none too long. Why, man, it's a dead calm, and the swell will send us into the surf on the reef quick enough without our dragging the ship into it. Reckon the best and only thing we can do, is down boats, and then slip cable right-away. We might get a show then to lay along the reef, and get clear."

"I'm not going to lose a new cable and anchor to please any one," was the stupid reply.

Then he sang out to the men to man the windlass.

The hands, realising the danger, turned to with a will, but within five minutes the first breath of the squall caught us, and sent us ahead, as was evident by the way the slackened cable came in through the hawsepipe.

We had out fifty-five fathoms of chain, and before twenty-five were in, the squall was upon us properly; the brigantine went gracefully ahead, overran her anchor, plunged into the roaring breakers on the reef, and struck bows on.

In another moment or two a heavy sea caught her on the starboard quarter, canted her round, and dashed her broadside on to the reef with terrific violence. Then, fortunately for our lives, two or three further rollers sent her crashing along till she brought up against two or three coral boulders, whose tops were revealed every now and then by the backwash. In less than twenty minutes she was hopelessly bilged, and her decks swept by every sea.

We carried three boats, and our native sailors showed their pluck and skill by actually getting all three safely into the water, two on the lee side, and one on the other.

The captain, now conscious of his folly, became very modest, and gave his orders quietly. The crew, however, took no notice of him and looked to the mate. He ordered me into the first boat, in which were the ship's papers, charts, chronometer, &c. I refused, and said I preferred getting on shore in my own way.

I had seen that two native boys had run out on to the bowsprit, and, watching their chance, had dropped over into a curling roller, and were carried safely ashore.

I had with me on board about nine hundred silver Mexican and Chili dollars--some in a cash box, the rest in a bag. Calling my native servant, Levi, I asked him if he thought all the boats would get ashore safely. He shook his head, said that it was doubtful, and that it would be better for me to throw the bag and the cash box over the lee side, where they were pretty sure to be recovered in the morning at low tide.

"All the boats will capsize, or get stove in, going over the reef, or else will be smashed to bits on the shore," he said, "and the natives will steal everything they can lay their hands on, especially if the white men are drowned. So it is better to throw the money overboard."

I took his advice, and going on deck, we dropped both box and bag overboard, just where Levi pointed out a big boulder, against which the brigantine was crushing and pounding her quarter.

Again refusing to enter any of the boats, I watched my chance, and ran for'ard, followed by Levi, and as soon as a big roller came along, we dropped, and were carried ashore beautifully. Some hundreds of natives and the white trader were on the look out, and ran in and caught us before the backwash carried us out again.

The mate's boat had already reached the shore without accident, owing to the splendid manner in which he and his native crew had handled her; but both the captain and second mate came to grief, their boats broaching to and capsizing just as they were within a few fathoms of the shore.

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