Kitabı oku: «From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life», sayfa 14

IX
A ROUNDABOUT ROAD TO CHINA
1867

With the termination of the War of Secession, which had concentrated the entire effort of the navy upon our own coasts and inland waters, the policy of the government reverted, irreflectively perhaps, to the identical system of distribution in squadrons that had existed before. The prolonged tension of mind and effort during four years of overwrought activity was followed by a period of reaction, to which, as far as the administration of the navy was concerned, the term collapse would scarcely be misapplied. Of course, for a few years the evil effects of this would not be observable in the military resources of the government. Only the ravages of time could deprive us of the hundreds of thousands of veterans just released from the active practice of war; and the navy found itself in possession of a respectable fleet, which, though somewhat over-specialized in order to meet the peculiar conditions of the hostilities, was still fairly modern. There was a body of officers fully competent in numbers and ability, and comparatively young. In the first ship on board which I made a long cruise, beginning in 1867, of ten in the ward-room, three only, the surgeon, paymaster, and chief engineer, were over thirty; and they barely. I myself, next to the captain, was twenty-six; and there was not a married man among us. The seamen, though professionally more liable to dispersion than the land forces, were not yet scattered. Thus provided against immediate alarms, and with the laurels of the War of Secession still fresh, the country in military matters lay down and went to sleep, like the hare in the fable, regardless of the incessant progress on every side, which, indeed, was scarcely that of the tortoise. Our ships underwent no change in character or armament.

Twenty years later, in the Pacific, I commanded one of these old war-horses, not yet turned out to grass or slaughter, ship-rigged to royals, and slow-steamed. One day the French admiral came on board to return my official visit. As he left, he paused for a moment abreast one of our big, and very old, pivot guns. "Capitaine," he said, "les vieux canons!" Two or three days later came his chief of staff on some errand or other. That discharged, when I was accompanying him to his boat at the gangway, he stopped in the same spot as the admiral. His gaze was meditative, reminiscent, perhaps even sentimental. "Où sont les neiges d'antan?" Whatever their present merits as fighting-machines, he saw before him an historical memento, sweeping gently, doubtless, the chords of youthful memories. "Oui, oui!" he said at last; "l'ancien systême. Nous l'avons eu." It was a summary of American naval policy during the twenty years following 1865; we "hail" things which other nations "had had," until Secretary Chandler started the movement of renovation by the first of all necessary steps, the official exposure of the sham to which we had allowed ourselves to be committed. There is an expression, "quaker guns," applied to blackened cylinders of wood, intended to simulate cannon, and mounted upon ramparts or a ship's broadside to impose upon an enemy as to the force before him. We made four such for the Macedonian, to deceive any merchant-men we spoke as to our battery, in case she should report us to an Alabama; and, being carried near the bows, much trouble they gave us, being usually knocked overboard when we tacked ship, or set a lower studding-sail. Well, by 1885 the United States had a "quaker" navy; the result being that, not the enemy, but our own people were deceived. Like poor Steece's passengers on board the Ariel, we were blissfully sheltering behind pine boards.

In 1867, however, these old ships and ancient systems were but just passing their meridian, and for a brief time might continue to live on their reputation. They were beautiful vessels in outline, and repaid in appearance all the care which the seamen naturally lavishes on his home. One could well feel proud of them; the more so that they had close behind them a good fighting record. It was to one such, the Iroquois, which had followed Farragut from New Orleans to Vicksburg, that I reported on the second day of that then new year. She was destined to China and Japan, the dream of years to me; but, better still, there was chalked out for her an extensive trip, "from Dan to Beersheba," as a British officer enviously commented in my hearing. We were to go by the West Indies to Rio de Janeiro, thence by the Cape of Good Hope to Madagascar, to Aden at the mouth of the Red Sea, to Muscat at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, and so by India and Siam to our first port in Chinese waters, Hong Kong. The time, too, was apposite, for Japan had not yet entered upon the path of modernization which she has since pursued with such revolutionary progress. Some eight or ten years ago there lunched with me a young Japanese naval officer, who I understand has occupied a position of distinguished responsibility during the recent war with Russia. I chanced to ask him if he had ever seen a two-sworded man. He replied, Never. He belonged to the samurai class, who once wore them; but in actual life they have disappeared. When the Iroquois reached Japan, and throughout her stay, two-sworded men were as thick almost as blackberries. To European prepossessions it was illuminating to see half a dozen riding down a street, hatless, crown of the head shaved, with a short pigtail at the back tied tight near the skull and then brought stiffly forward close to the scalp; their figures gowned, the handles of the two swords projecting closely together from the left side of their garments, and the feet resting in stirrups of slipper form, which my memory says were of straw-work; but of that I am less sure. This equipment was completed by a painted fan stuck in the belt, and at times an opened paper umbrella. I have been passenger in the same boat with some of these warriors, accoutred as above, and using their fans as required, while engaged in animated conversation with the courtesy and smiling affability characteristic of all classes in Japan. Such, in outward seeming, then was the as yet raw material, out of which have been evolved the heroic soldiery who have recently astonished the world by the practical development they have given to modern military ideas; then as unlike the troops which now are, except in courage, as the ancient Japanese war-junk is to the present battle-ship. I was in Japan at the arrival of their first iron-clad, purchased in the United States, and doubtless long since consigned to the scrap-heap; but of her hereafter.

A glance over the list of vessels in the Navy Register of 1907 shows me that the once abundant Indian names have disappeared, except where associated with some State or city; or, worse, have been degraded to tugboats, a treatment which the Indian, with all his faults, scarcely deserves. They no longer connote ships of war. Iroquois, Seminole, Mohican, Wyoming, Oneida, Pawnee, and some dozens more, are gone with the ships, and like the tribes, which bore them. Yet what more appropriate to a vessel meant for a scout than the tribal epithet of a North American Indian! Dacotah, alone survives; while for it the march of progress in spelling has changed the c to k, and phonetically dropped the silent, and therefore supposedly useless, h. As if silence had no merits! is the interjection, ah, henceforth to be spelled a? Since they with their names have passed into the world of ghosts—can there be for them a sea in the happy hunting-grounds?—it may be historically expedient to tell what manner of craft they were. If only some contemporary had done the same by the trireme, what time and disputation might have been saved!

The Iroquois and her sisters, built in the fifties, were vessels of the kind to which I have applied the term corvette, then very common in all navies; cruisers only; scouts, or commerce-destroyers. Not of the line of battle, although good fighting-ships. Ours were of a thousand tons, as size was then stated, or about seven hundred tons "displacement," as the more modern expression runs; displacement being the weight of the water displaced by the hull which rests in and upon it. Thus measured, they were from one-third to one-fourth the dimensions of the vessels called third-class cruisers, which now correspond to them; but their serviceableness in their time was sufficiently attested by the Confederate Alabama, substantially of this general type, as was her conqueror, the Kearsarge. For external appearance, they were something over two hundred feet long, with from one-fifth to one-sixth that width, and sat low in the water. Low and long are nautical features, suggestive of grace and speed, which have always obtained recognition for beauty; and the rail of these vessels ran unbroken, but with a fine sweep, from bow to stern. Along the water-line, and extending a few inches above it, shone the burnished copper, nearly parallel to the rail, between which and it glistened the saucy black hull.

Steam had not yet succeeded in asserting its undivided sway; but the Iroquois and her mates marked a stage in the progress, for they carried sails really as auxiliary, and were intended primarily to be fast steamers, as speed was reckoned in their time. The larger vessels of the service were acceptedly slow under steam. They had it chiefly to fight with, and to help them across the places where wind failed or weakened. These corvettes carried sails with a view to saving coal, by utilizing the well-defined wind zones of the ocean when fair for their course. Though the practical result for both was much the same, the underlying idea was different. In the one, sail held the first place; in the other, steam; and it is the idea which really denotes and maintains intellectual movement and material progress. This was represented accordingly in the rig adopted. Like a ship, they had three masts, yes; but only the two forward were square-rigged, and on each of them but three sails. The lofty royals were discarded. The general result was to emphasize the design of speed under steam, and the use of sails with a fresh, fair wind only; a distinct, if partial, abandonment of the "auxiliary" steam reliance which so far had governed naval development. It may be added that the shorter and lighter masts, by a common optical effect, increased the impression of the vessel's length and swiftness, as was the case with the old-time sailing-frigate when her lofty topgallant-masts were down on deck.

Under sail alone the Iroquois could never accomplish anything, except with a fair wind. We played with her at times, on the wind and tacking, but she simply slid off to leeward—never fetched near where she looked. Consonant with the expedient of using sails where the wind served, the screw could be disconnected from its shaft and hoisted; held in position, clear of the water, by iron pawls. In this way the hinderance of its submerged drag upon the speed of the ship was obviated. We did this on occasions, when we could reckon on a long period of favorable breezes; but it was a troublesome and somewhat anxious operation. The chance of a slip was not great, but the possibility was unpleasant to contemplate. When I add that for armament we carried one 100-pounder rifled gun on a pivot, and four 9-inch smooth-bore shell guns—these being the naval piece which for the most part fought the War of Secession, then just closed—I shall have given the principal distinguishing features of a class of vessel which did good service in its day, and is now a much of the past as is the Spanish Armada. Yet it is only forty years since.

After being frozen up and snowed under, during a very bitter and boisterous January, we at last got to sea, and soon ran into warmer weather. Our first stop was at the French West India island Guadeloupe, and there I had set for me amusingly that key-note of travelling experience which most have encountered. I was dining at a café, and after dinner got into conversation with an officer of the garrison. I asked him some question about the wet weather then reigning. "C'est exceptionnel," he replied; and exceptional we found it "from Dan to Beersheba." At our next port, Ciará, there was drought when every resident said it should have rained constantly—a variation a stranger could endure; while at Rio it was otherwise peculiar—"the warmest April in years." The currents all ran contrary to the books, and the winds which should have been north hung obstinately at south. Whether for natural productions, or weather, or society, we were commonly three months too late or two months too soon; or, as one of "ours" put it, we should have come in the other monsoon. Nevertheless, it was impossible for youth and high spirits to follow our schedule and not find it spiced to the full with the enjoyment of novelty; if not in season, at least well seasoned.

However, every one travels nowadays, and it is time worse than wasted to retell what many have seen. But do many of our people yet visit our intended second port, that most beautiful bay of Rio de Janeiro? I fancy not. It is far out of the ordinary line, and the business immigration to South America is much more from Europe than from our own continent; but, having since visited many harbors, in many lands, I incline to agree with my old captain of the Congress, there is none that equals Rio, viewed from the anchorage. Like Japan, I was happy enough to see Rio before it had been much improved, while the sequestered, primitive, tropical aspect still clung to it. I suppose the red-tiled roofs still rise as before from among the abundant foliage and the orange-trees, in the suburb of Bota Fogo; that the same deliciously suggestive smell of the sugar and rum hogsheads hangs about the streets; that the long, narrow Rua do Ouvidor is still brilliant with its multicolored feather flowers; and that at night the innumerable lights dazzle irregularly upward, like the fireflies which also there abound, over the hill-sides and promontories that so charmingly break the shore line. But already in 1867 the strides since 1860 were strikingly visible. In the earlier year I used frequently to visit a friend living at Nichtherohy, on the opposite shore of the bay. The ferriage then was by trig, long, sharp-bowed, black paddle steamers, with raking funnels. They were tremendously fussy, important, puffing little chaps, with that consequential air which so frequently accompanies moderate performance. The making a landing was a complicated and tedious job, characterized by the same amount of needless action and of shortcoming in accomplishment. We would back and stop about twenty feet away from the end of a long, projecting pier. Then ropes would be got ashore from each extremity of the vessel; which done, she would back again, and the bow line would be shortened in. Then she would go ahead, and the like would be done by the stern line. This would fetch her, say, ten feet away, when the same processes must be repeated. I never timed, for why should one be in a hurry in the tropics, where no one else is? but it seemed to me that sometimes ten minutes were thus consumed. In 1867 these had disappeared, and had been replaced by Yankee double-ended boats, which ran into slips such as we have. Much more expeditious and sensible, but familiar and ugly to a degree, and not in the least entertaining; nor, I may add, congruous. They put you at once on the same absurd "jump" that we North Americans practise; whereas in the others we placidly puffed our cigars in an atmosphere of serenity. Time and tide may be so ridiculous as not to wait; we knew that waiting was enjoyment. The boat had time to burn, and so had we. At the later date, street-cars also had been introduced, and we were told were doing much to democratize the people. The man whose ability to pay for a cab had once severed him from the herd now went along with it, and saved his coppers. The black coats and tall black silk hats, with white trousers and waistcoats, which always struck me as such an odd blend, were still in evidence.

The Iroquois did not succeed in making Rio without a stop. The northeast trades hung well to the eastward after we left Guadeloupe, and blew hard with a big sea; for it was the northern winter. Running across them, as we were, the ship was held close to the wind under fore and aft canvas. For a small vessel nothing is more uncomfortable. Rolling and butting at waves which struck the bow at an angle of forty-five degrees made walking, not impossible, indeed, to practised sea legs, but still a constant succession of gymnastic balancings that took from it all pleasure. For exercise it was not needed. You had but to sit at your desk and write, with one leg stretched out to keep your position. The varied movements of the muscles of that leg, together with those of the rest of the body, in the continued effort "to correct the horizontal deviation," as Boatswain Chucks phrased it, sent you to bed wearily conscious that you had had constitutional enough. The large consumption of coal in proportion to the ground covered made a renewal necessary, and we went into Ciará, an open roadstead sheltered only by submerged coral reefs, on the northeast coast of Brazil. Here the incessant long trade swell sets in upon a beach only partly protected; and boating is chiefly by catamarans, or jangadas, as the Portuguese word is,—three or four long trunks of trees, joined together side by side, without keel, but with mast. These are often to be seen far outside, and ride safely over the heavy breakers.

From Rio to Capetown, being in the month of May, corresponding to our northern November, we had a South Atlantic passage which in boisterousness might hold its own with that between the United States and Europe, now familiar to so many. When clear of the tropics, one strikes in both hemispheres the westerly gales which are, so to say, the counter-currents of the atmosphere responding to the trade-winds of the equatorial belt—almost as prevalent in direction, though much more variable in force. The early Spanish navigators characterized them as "vientos bravos," an epithet too literally and flatteringly rendered into English by our seamen as "the brave west winds;" the Spanish "bravo" meaning rude. For a vessel using sail, however, "brave" may pass; for, if they hustled her somewhat unceremoniously, they at least did speed her on her way. On two successive Thursdays their prevalence was interrupted by a tempest, which in each case surpassed for suddenness, violence, and shortness anything that I remember; for I have never met a tropical hurricane, nor the full power of a China typhoon. On the first occasion the sun came up yellow and wet, with a sulky expression like that of a child bathed against its will; but, as the wind was moderate, sail was made soon after daylight. Immediately it began to freshen, and so rapidly that we could scarce get the canvas in fast enough. By ten it was blowing furiously. To be heard by a person standing at your elbow, you had to shout at the top of your voice. The wind shifted rapidly, a cyclone in miniature as to dimensions, though not as to strength; but the Iroquois had been hove-to on the right tack according to the law of storms. That is, the wind hauled aft; and as she followed, close to it, she headed to the sea instead of falling into the trough. When square sails are set, this gradual movement in the same direction is still more important; for, should the wind fly suddenly ahead, the sails may be taken aback, a very awkward situation in heavy weather. By five o'clock this gradual shifting had passed from east, by north, to west, where the gale died out; having lasted only about eight hours, yet with such vehemence that it had kicked up a huge sea. By 10 p.m. the stars were shining serenely, a gentle breeze barely steadying the ship, under increased canvas, in the huge billows which for a few hours continued to testify that things had been nasty. A spoiled child that has carried a point by squalling could scarcely present a more beaming expression than did the heavens; but our wet decks and clothes assured us that our discomfort had been real and was not yet over.

Throughout the ordeal the little Iroquois—for small she was by modern standards—though at a stand-still, lay otherwise as unconcerned as a duck in a mill-pond; her screw turning slowly, a triangular rag of storm-sail showing to steady her, rolling deeply but easily, and bowing the waves with gentle movement up or down, an occasional tremor alone betraying the shock when an unusually heavy comber hit her in the eyes. Then one saw admiringly that the simile "like a sea-fowl" was no metaphor, but exact. None were better qualified to pronounce than we, for the South Atlantic abounds in aquatic birds. We were followed continuously by clouds of them, low flying, skirting the water, of varied yet sober plumage. The names of these I cannot pretend to give, except the monarch of them all, in size and majesty of flight, the albatross, of unsullied white, as its name implies—the king of the southern ocean. Several of these enormous but graceful creatures were ever sweeping about us in almost endless flight, hardly moving their wings, but inclining them wide-spread, now this way, now that, like the sails of a windmill, to catch the breeze, almost never condescending to the struggle of a stroke. By this alone they kept up with us, running eight or nine knots. As a quiet demonstration of reserve power it was most impressive; while the watching of the intricate manœuvres of these and their humbler companions afforded a sort of circus show, a relief always at hand to the monotony of the voyage.

As this has remained my only crossing of the South Atlantic, my experience cannot claim to be wide; but, as far as it goes, these animating accompaniments of a voyage under sail are there far more abundant and varied than in the northern ocean. How far the steamer in southern latitudes may still share this privilege, I do not know; but certainly I now rarely see the petrel, unfairly called stormy, numbers of which hung ever near in the wake of a sailing-ship on her way to Europe, keeping company easily with a speed of seven or eight knots, and with spare power enough to gyrate continually in their wayward flight. What instinct taught them that there was food there for them? and, if my observation agree with that of others, why have they disappeared from steamers? Is it the greater pace that wearies, or the commotion of the screw that daunts them?

Our second Thursday gale, May 16th, exceeded the first in fury and duration. Beginning at daybreak, it lasted till after sundown, twelve hours in all; and during it the Iroquois took on board the only solid sea that crossed her rail during my more than two years' service in her. We sprung also our main mast-head, which made us feel flatteringly like the ancient mariners, who, as we had read, were always "springing" (breaking) some spar or other. Ancient mariners and albatrosses are naturally mutually suggestive. Except for the greater violence, the conditions were much the same as a week before; with the exception, however, that the sun shone brightly most of the time from a cloudless sky, between which and us there interposed a milky haze, the vapor of the spoon-drift. During the height of the storm the pressure of the wind in great degree kept down the sea, which did not rise threateningly till towards the end. For the rest, our voyage of thirty-three hundred miles, while it afforded us many samples of weather, presented as a chief characteristic perpetual westerly gales, with gloomy skies and long, high following swell. Although the wind was such that close to it we should have been reduced to storm-sails, the Iroquois scudded easily before it, carrying considerable canvas. "Before it" must not be understood to mean ahead of the waves. These, as they raced along continually, swept by the ship, which usually lifted cleverly abaft as they came up; though at rare intervals a tiny bit of a crest would creep along over the poop and fall on the quarter-deck below—nothing to hurt. The onward movement of the billows, missing thus the stern, culminated generally about half-way forward, abreast the main-mast; and if the ship, in her continual steady but easy roll, happened just then to incline to one side, she would scoop in a few dozen buckets of water, enough to keep the decks always sloppy, as it swashed from side to side.

From Rio to the Cape took us thirty-two days. This bears out the remark I find in an old letter that the Iroquois was very slow; but it attests also a series of vicissitudes which have passed from my mind, leaving predominant those only that I have noted. Among other experiences, practically all our mess crockery was smashed; the continual rolling seemed to make the servants wilfully reckless. Also, having an inefficient caterer, our sea stores were exhausted on the way, with the ludicrous exception of about a peck of nutmegs. Another singular incident remains in my memory. At dawn of the day before our arrival, a mirage presented so exactly, and in the proper quarter, the appearance of Table Mountain, the landmark of Cape Town, that our captain, who had been there more than once, was sure of it. As by the reckoning it must be still over a hundred miles distant, the navigating officer was summoned, to his great disconcertment, to be eye-witness of his personal error; and the chronometers fell under unmerited suspicion. The navigator was an inveterate violinist. He had a curious habit of undressing early, and then, having by this symbolic act laid aside the cares of the day, as elbow space was lacking in his own cabin, he would play in the open ward-room for an hour or more before turning in; always standing, and attired in a white night-shirt of flowing dimensions. He was a tall, dark, handsome man, the contrast of his full black beard emphasizing the oddness of his costume; and so rapt was he in his performance that remarks addressed directly to him were unheard. I often had to remind him at ten o'clock that music must not longer trouble the sleep of the mid-watch officers. On this occasion, with appearances so against him, perplexed but not convinced, after looking for a few moments he went below and sought communion with his beloved instrument; nor did the fading of the phantasm interrupt his fiddling. When announced, he listened absently, and continued his aria unmoved by such trivialities. Cape Flyaway, as counterfeits like this are called, had lasted so long and looked so plausible that the order was given to raise steam; and when it vanished later, after the manner of its kind, the step was not countermanded, for the weather was calm and there were abundant reasons in our conditions for hurrying into port.

At the season of our stay, May and June, the anchorage at Cape Town itself, being open to the northward, is exposed to heavy gales from that quarter, often fatal to shipping. I believe this defect has now been remedied by a breakwater, which in 1867 either had not been begun or was not far enough advanced to give security. Vessels therefore commonly betook themselves to Simon's Bay, on the other side of the Cape, where these winds blew off shore. Thither the Iroquois went; and as communication with Cape Town, some twenty miles away, was by stage, the opportunity for ordinary visiting was indifferent. We went up by detachments, each staying several days. The great local natural feature of interest, Table Mountain, has since become familiar in general outline by the illustrations of the Boer War; from which I have inferred that similar formations are common in South Africa, just as I remember at the head of Rio Bay, on the road to Petropolis, a reproduction in miniature, both in form and color, of the huge red-brown Sugar-Loaf Rock that dominates the entrance from the sea. Seen as a novelty, Table Mountain was most impressive; but it seems to me that Altar Mountain would more correctly convey its appearance. With rocky sides, which rose precipitate as the Palisades of the Hudson, the sky-line was horizontal, and straight as though drawn by a ruler. At times a white cloud descends, covering its top and creeping like loose drapery down the sides, resembling a table-cloth; which name is given it. I believe that is reckoned a sign of bad weather.

I recall many things connected with our stay there, but chiefly trivialities. Most amusing, because so embarrassing to the unprepared, was an unlooked-for and startling attention received from the British soldiery, whom I now met for the first time: for the war at home had hitherto prevented the men of my date from having much foreign cruising. I was in uniform in the streets, confining myself severely to my own business, when I saw approaching a squad of redcoats under a non-commissioned officer. Being used to soldiers, I was observing them only casually, but still with the interest of novelty, when wholly unexpectedly I heard, "Eyes right!" and the entire group, as one man, without moving their heads, slewed their eyes quickly round and fastened them steadily on me; the corporal also holding me with his glittering eye, while carrying his hand to his cap. Of course, in all salutes, from a civilian lifting his hat to a lady, to a military passing in review, the person saluting looks at the one saluted; but to find one's self without warning the undivided recipient of the steady stare of some half-dozen men, transfixed by what Mr. Snodgrass called "the mild gaze of intelligence beaming from the eyes of the defenders of their country," was, however flattering, somewhat disturbing to one not naturally obtrusive. With us the salute would have been given, of course; but only by the non-commissioned officer, touching his cap. Afterwards I was on the lookout for this, and dodged it when I could.