Dec. 13, 1902.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
47S 
as a rule, comfortable and sometimes even elegant apart- 
ments are provided for the after guard; and in case there 
is a woman on board, wife of captain or mate, the in- 
terior is at once transformed into something like a shore 
home and rendered doubly inviting by the contrast be- 
tween its air of homelike quiet and the rough and rude 
aspect of things on deck. As the vessel grows in size, 
the cabins keep pace Avith the rest, and those in some of 
our recent big schooners are dreams of corhfort, luxury 
and tastCj with steam heat, telephone forward, bath rooms 
finished in white and gold oftentimes finished through- 
out in natural woods ; and, in fact, wholly in keeping with 
the American spirit that is not content till it leads the 
world. One of our four-masted schooners a couple of 
years ago, created a sensation in France. They had 
never imagined anything so magnificent; but thousands 
passed that vessel every daj-^ in Boston and never gave 
a second look. 
But it was no morning to stay below; the captain was 
impatient of delay, and the passenger had been so long a 
time short of sea and breeze that we preferred the deck. 
In the course of an hour Captain Joe, who had kept his 
binoculars trained up the harbor, gave a grunt of satisfac- 
tion. 
"Here come our shell-backs. Bet they won't go back 
this time. If I once get 'em aboard we will go to sea, if 
they are all dead drunk." 
The boat came alongside, the four sailors who were 
grouped on the forw^ard deck passed up their bags and 
dove into the forecastle, soon to reappear, rigged for duty. 
"Now, then, boys, Spanker, " sang out the mate, as the 
first man "showed a leg" out of the forecastle door. 
"Spanker, sir." "Spanker" was echoed as they jumped 
to obey, and three of us on each halyard sent the gaff 
aloft till the weight of the canvas began to tell. She 
comes harder now, and four get on to the throat, then the 
peak; the fore-handed man sings out the word, with all 
kinds of twnsts and accents, and a few inches at a time 
the heavy sail creeps up. 
"That's well, sir, the peak. Jig." 
"Jig, sir," and the gang tail on to the jig (a smaller tackle 
on the other end of the halyards, which increases the pur- 
chase many fold). But all must pull together or the 
effort is wasted, and the only way to do so is for one of 
the men, usually the best sailor in the bunch, or, if the 
mate is hauling with them, the duty falls upon him, ex- 
officio, to give the signal: and this is done by the most 
unintelligible string of expressions, which mean nothing 
more 'than that it is time to transfer your weight from 
the deck to the halyard or rope on which you have barely 
room to place your hand ; for with four hauling on one 
halyard, each one must know what to do with his knees 
■and elbows, and nctt knock somebody in the eye or sit 
down in his lap. So it goes like this : "A-ha-a-a!" "Up 
with him!" "Plo-bov!" "Peak him!" "She must!" 
"Wey-hey— !" "Yo-oh-oh-oh. Ho.!" "Come down!" 
till your arms ache. "Catch a turn!" cries the mate. 
"Swing off !" and the bunch settles back till they touch the 
deck, and the mate hauls in the slack. The boom rises 
from the saddle and the heavy sail is set, flattened by the 
weight of the spar. 
So, I imagine, Dana sailed out of Boston seventy years 
ago. 
Main and foresail folioAV, and then we man the wind- 
lass, and walk her up to the anchors till the brakes begin 
to go hard. The mate looks over the bows. "Heave 
away!" "Heave!" "Start up the outer jibs a couple 
of yer !" and he lends a hand at the windlass. The mate 
of "a coasting schooner has plenty to do. Suddenly the 
chain comes in freely, the anchor i;S^ broken out and the 
brakes go rapidly up and down. 
"Vast heaving!" Jib halyards. "Jib halyards, sir!" 
"Two of yer jump up and loose them tops'ls!" The old 
man has the wheel. We hoist away on the jibs and soon 
the cry comes down from aloft: "All ready the main!" 
"All ready the fore !" 
"Let 'em hang and lav down. One hand talce the 
wheel." 
The mate comes aft and gives a look around. "This 
wind is terrible light; we shall have a head tide, too." 
The schooner is slipping quietly through the water, but 
as we get into Broad Sound, the wind, which had been 
losing strength, fell altogether, the flood tide began to 
make its power felt, and to prevent drifting back up the 
channel we anchor and haul down the jibs. 
The steward comes aft with his basket, and the odor of 
ham and eggs floats up through the companion-way. 
What an appetite all this has given us! The crisp 
air and exercise have started every muscle and nerve into 
action, and ynu are alive. It takes a couple of hours of 
this sort' of thing to make one appreciate ham and eggs. 
You crave something strong : strong ham, strong coffee, 
strong dishes, strong language; the atmosphere of the sea 
breeds strength, and things which on shore among shore- 
folks would create a terrible comraotion, at sea 
pass unpoticed; tte grub served up in tl;? fgre^ 
castle amid filthy surroundings is eaten with a relish; 
while, if the same were set before men of the same 
stamp, engaged in some indoor, enervating occupation on 
land, there would be a revolt. Niceties of speech and 
action have no place on shipboard ; the rough, sturdy 
qualities are the ones that tell, and the men who can 
drive these schooners up and down the worst coast in the 
world, winter and sunnncr, may and do have the aspect of 
refinement; but just beneath is the rugged self-confidence 
and resourceful spirit that does not show up to the pub- 
lic on the diamond or gridiron with thousands of yelling 
"rooters" to goad them on, but fights its battles alone 
off shore som.ewhere without an audience, in the cold 
and wet and danger of the North Atlantic. 
I love to rub elbows with these men; to share for a 
period a little of the exposure and risk they experience 
through the years, and after meeting, day in and day 
"peak him," 
out, the artificial life of the city; the soft muscled, soft 
spoken clerks- and business men of the street, what a 
change to heave at a winch and haul at a rope with a half- 
dozen stalwart two-fisted fellows who could clean out a 
store full of men-milliners. I never meet a man with 
clean, soft, white hands, bediamond, maybe, without a 
wish that I could be the mate for one watch, turn him 
out at eight bells some cold, rainy night and send him 
aloft to furl a topsail. 
A few weeks ago a coasting captain and I went into 
.an ice-cream parlor in Savannah to kill an hour one 
evening, and were seated at a table; two or three girls 
came in, walked up to the soda fountain and engaged in 
a vapory conversation with the delicate thing who stirred 
the, syrups. As they exchanged sweet nothings over the 
counter, the young man's mezzo-soprano voice was heard: 
"Yes, a nickel, please. Thanks. Ta ! Ta !" 
I glanced at the "old man," who, by the way, had prac- 
tically lost all his sleep on the passage down on account 
of neuralgic pains in the face, the beginning of the end 
of twenty years of knocking round the coast, and had 
often expressed his lost opinion of a seafaring life. 
"Which had you rather do, serve out syrup and taffy to 
the girls in this gilded alhambra, or go to sea?" 
"Go to sea, by " and the withering look of dis- 
gust he gave the innocent peddler of prattle said so, too. 
But ours was to be no winter passage this time. The 
Indian summer haze hung over the sea and the sun re- 
flected from the smooth water was warm at noon. Off 
in the southern board a dark streak appeared, and soon 
a light southeasterly reached in and we got underway. 
SPANKER BOOM (THAT SOMETIMES T.\KES CHARGE). 
Jibs and anchor c^me up again, and Captain Joe hove the 
wheel down. 
"If I can get this old wagon round on the other tack 
we will start across the bay; but she does hate to come; 
let's flatten in this spanker sheet, son. Now, when she 
rolls, hook that boom 'tayckle' on to the rail. Come aft 
a couple of yer and man spanker-boom tayckle." 
"Spanker-boom-tayckle, sir ; spanker-boom-tayckle, sir," 
and we work her around and get her headed for Cape 
Cod. 
"Get the tops'ls on her (to the mate)," and we mast- 
head the mizzen from the poop, haul out the sheet on the 
winch and take the tack around the, mast. The fore and 
main go up to the same music as the lower canvas, "A-a- 
ho !" "Rouse him !" "Once again !"_ "Mast-head him !" 
and then as the hard, sudden jar coming the length of the 
halyards from the topmast head, tells us that one block 
is hard up against the other. "Two blocks! Belay!" 
"Sheet!" "Sheet, sir!" "Tack!" "Tack, sir!" and the 
sail is set. 
The wind comes fairly fresh, and we go out of the 
sound dragging the c^ptcrboard along the bottom tjBtil 
the old boat trembles ; but she is soon clear of the shoal',, 
and we spend the rest of the afternoon beating slowly 
out of the bay. 
The mate has all hands forward getting the anchor, 
which has been hanging from the bows on the rail, whence 
a turn of the hand can send it to the bottom again; fenders 
are piled just forward of the break of the quarter deck; 
decks are cleared up, hatches taken off to air the hold, and 
if the weather permits all hands have a busy day in the 
hold, sweepfng up and dumping overboard coal dust ; and 
if the vessel be bound South for lumber, or down East 
for ice, a thorough mate will make the hold as clean as a 
table, after a day of wet, dirty drudgery. 
The night was calm, clear, and the sea smooth. The sea 
i? fascinating by day; night adds the charm of mystery. 
Except upon the blackest, darkest riight, you can always 
see something; a cheerful ray from the cabin skylight 
shines into the spanker and illumines sail and boom with 
ever-changing areas of light. The dim glow iti the bin- 
nacle seems almost like a companion, and the bright com- 
pass card the true friend that it is. The soft hiss of 
foam under the boat on the stern davits, as the water 
races past, or the squeak of a block aloft, or the groan- 
ing of some unknown timber, sounds different at night. 
The cool, damp air fans out of the sails, the deck is wet 
with dew, the spars, magnified by the darkness, appear to 
stretch up out of sight; the great expanse of canvas looks 
almost ghostly. If it is calm, the racket is tremendous. 
This may seem paradoxical, but a large schooner or any 
fcre-and-aft-rigged vessel of size, becalmed in a sea or 
with a light following wind, can create a most awful dis- 
turbance, and especially at night. With no wind to steady 
SCHOONER LUCINDA G. POTTER DISCHARGING COAL. TAKEN 
JUST BEFORE HER LAST TRIP. 
her, your watch on deck is a series of groanings, creak- 
ings and ripping, tearing thunder, varied about every two 
minutes by, perhaps, ten seconds of absolute quiet, when 
you can hear the clock ticking in the fo'ard cabin ; then a 
block squeaks up aloft as she rolls to windward, booms 
grind on the saddles, the heavy gaffs dig their jaws into 
the mast, boom-tackles snap up short, and as she rolls to 
leeward the sheets take the strain, sheet-blocks are 
whipped up from the deck to fall again Avith a crash, the 
immense spanker boom, well off over the quarter, rises 
high in the air; the weather lift slats into the sail with 
a swish that sounds like the explosion of a rocket, as the 
spar falls again, and you think the sleepers below will 
surely come up to see what the trouble is. 
But with a breeze which allows everything to draw, the 
sight of a big schooner stealing along at night, the moon 
lighting up the decks and showing every sail full and 
hard, as clear as day, is one to remember. There is quiet 
then; the man at the wheel leans against it, motionless; 
she would steer herself with the wheel in the becket. 
There is just enough wind to keep her moving without 
any fuss ; and gazing up at the quiet stretches of canvas 
and towering spars, you forget earth and dirt and trouble; 
the world is made of wood and canvas, and is inhabited 
only by fleeting shadows coming and going in the uncer- 
tain light, and you are apart from it somewhere in space--^ 
then the mate begins a long yarn about his girl in Provi- 
dence and breaks the spell. 
The day following found us off the Cape with the wind 
about south and weather threatening; the small fleet that 
had come out of Boston Bay with us, was hull down 
astern, and Captain Joe picked up the end of the spanker 
sheet and shook it over the rail : "Come on. I never saw 
anything yet this old packet wouldn't outsail. She's a 
plank on edge, but she will travel." 
And we were traveling. She was heeled over like a 
yacht, and one could hardly stand on deck. Toward dark 
we laid out and furled the outer jibs, clewed down the 
staysails and fore and main topsails. Next to flying comes 
riding the jib boom of a vessel in a seaway ; you are lifted 
with one grand sweep, poised a moment in mid air and 
then things drop from under you. You reach forth your 
hand to grasp a stay and your hand flies up. You try 
to step on a foot rope and find that you weigh nothing. 
You cannot get down to it; you lie over the boom and 
feel no pressure ; and then you weigh four or five hundred 
pounds, and can hardly raise hand or foot as she lifts 
again. The roar of water under the bows is like a small 
cataract, and the humming of the wind through the rig- 
ging, the strong, bracing air of ocean, the general atmos- 
phere of rude, rough life are a tonic to the Qm wI\q 
doesn't Tcmt to. 
