478 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[Dec 9, 1905. 
The Tub in the Cove at New Hamburgh. A stretch of the Erie Canal. Narrow portion ahead, aqueduct over a large creek. To the left 
Abe and his wagon, towing The Tub. 
and bundles and came to town; but I changed plans for 
wintering the Tub. Going up to Tompkin’s Cove the 
last of September, I hired a lad to help me, and after 
whistling for the wind for a day, we set out to drift or 
sail or get to New York somehow, but the wind fell 
off, and after hard towing by the rowboat, we anchored 
at nightfall in a cove at Haverstraw. Next morning 
the wind was dead ahead, and we could not move, and 
after drumming our heels till we chafed at the delay, 
we rowed off to a goodly schooner, which had just come 
over Haverstraw Bay and anchored in the offing, and 
she proved to be the E. H. Taylor, of Chiiicoteague, 
Va. 
“Ship ahoy!” says I. 
“Hello,” says he. 
“Aren’t you a long way from home?” says I. 
“Right you are,” says he. 
“Where bound for?” 
“Down the river empty; brought timber to Croton 
and hoped to get a return load of brick from Haver- 
straw, but failing, must go to New York empty and 
get a cargo of coal there.” 
“Will you tow my houseboat?” 
“With pleasure,” says he. 
“Amen,” says I. 
So the boy and I towed the Tub out and hitched her 
on behind the schooner, while the skipper and his crew 
of two darkies went ashore for grub, leaving the vessel 
in charge of the captain’s boy and girl. Soon we set 
out. And what a trip! It was the best item of the entire 
voyage. The light wind soon fell to a dead calm, while 
the schooners over on the east shore were moving 
seerningly with a fair wind, but with never a breath 
stirring in our neighborhood the strong tide threatened 
to drive us square on to Rockland lighthouse, which is 
perched on a rock a quarter-mile out in the river; but 
in the nick of time a light wind came out of the east 
and the schooner started on a long straight reach, 
wdiich ended only at Yonkers at sundown; and how the 
Tub did travel! The wind steadily and quickly fresh- 
ened till it blew half a gale. The Taylor had doffed her 
topsails and fairly flew through the wbitecaps which 
now raced and leaped high over the broad bay. I had 
two towlines out, one on each quarter, but they 
stretched and shrunk so under the strain that I had to 
shout for another line. A darky passed out a rope to 
us as thick as a man’s arm. and with this securely fast- 
ened, we felt safe. The old Tub surely never moved so 
fast before, and could not have stood the racket but 
that we were traveling in the smooth wake of the 
schooner about sixty feet astern. Occasionally a stray 
sea would give her a lick in the chops, smothering the 
forward deck with ,^pray; but the boy and I were cov- 
ered in oil skins and fairly crowed with delight at the 
exhilaration of the trip. 
_ Next day things went all wrong — wind dead ahead, 
tide against us, and a great tow in the way, made 
Spuyten Duyvil hard to reach; but reach it we did, then 
good-by to our kind Virginia friends, and we floated in 
smooth water in the creek which the Dutch trumpeter 
essayed to swim in spite of the Devil, and there the Tub 
lies in winter quarters, being the end of her cruise and 
of my tale. 
If readers are interested in the interior fittings of the 
lub, I may say that the cabin or house is built down 
into the hull, which is much better, according to my 
notion, than to build it on deck; a sliding hatch on 
each end and steps give access from the deck to the 
interior. The galley is aft, rather small, with shelves 
arrayed all about the wall, a table consisting of a long 
wide shelf hinged to a bulkhead, so it can be dropped 
and everything within reach. Rain water was drained 
off the roof into an old cylindrical kitchen boiler, which 
w'e stowed, upright, in the corner. Next comes a state- 
room containing two cots, with a gangway to one side. 
The balance of the cabin — that is, about two-thirds — 
forms the living and dining room, with three windows 
on each side and divided off at night by curtains when 
privacy is desired. We had three cots in this large 
■room, but it would easily accommodate six, and the 
cots can readily be laid aside at daytime if they are in 
the way. 
Forty-footer Baboon Sold— Mr. Hollis Burgess has 
sold the famous 40-footer Baboon, owned by Mr, Au- 
gustus P. Poring, of Boston, U._Mr, Willard Welsh, also 
of Boston. Baboon^ is an auxiliary schooner designed 
by Air. Edward Burgess and built by Lawley. 
One Sunday. 
Ten years ago I was “in the half-deck” of a four- 
masted bark. We were lying in Cardiff, loading patent 
fuel for the West coast. There were six of us “in the 
half-deck.” Saving the cook, the steward, the mate, and 
the old man, we were the only folk aboard. In the day- 
time on weekdays we bent sails, or hoisted stores aboard, 
of shifted topsail sheets. In the evenings we went 
ashore to flaunt our brass buttons in St. Mary street 
and to eat sweetstuff in the bunshops. Two of us used 
to drink “rum hot” in a little public house near the 
docks. One of us made love to a waitress. We all 
smoked pipes and cocked our caps at an angle. One of 
us came aboard drunk one night, in a pretty pickle, hav- 
ing fallen into the dock. Another of our number got 
kicked out of a music hall. Youth has strange ways and 
strange pleasures. 
On Sundays we did no work after we had hoisted the 
house flag and the red ensign. We were free to go 
ashore for the day, leaving one of our number aboard to 
act as boatman. The “old man” always told us to go to 
church. Sometimes he asked us for the parson’s text, 
wheii we came aboard again. One of the six, who had 
been carefully brought up, used to answer for the. rest. 
I think he made up the texts on the spur of the moment. 
He is dead now, poor fellow. He was a good shipmate. 
One Sunday 1 went ashore with the rest to spend the 
day in the park playing cricket with a stick and a tennis 
ball. In the afternoon we went to a little teashop not 
far from sailor town, a place we patronized. It was up 
a flight of stairs. It was a long room, with oilcloth on 
the floor and marble-top tables and wicker chairs and a 
piano. There was a framed text on the piano top. It 
w'as all scrawled over on the imprinted part with mes- 
sages to Kitty, a tall Welshw'oman, with but one eye, 
who acted as waitress. The ivall was all scrawled over, 
too, with pencilled texts, proverbs, maxims, scraps of 
verses. 
On this particular Sunday, when I entered, there were 
half a dozen other apurentices already seated at their teas, 
They were all West Coast apprentices — that is, they had 
been one or 'two voyages to Qiili and Peru in West 
Coast barks engaged in the carriage of nitrates. They 
v/ere not a very choice lot, as apprentices go, but they 
knew the West Coast, which we did not, and one of 
them, a lad named Parsons, was popular among us. He 
had a singularly sweet tenor voice. He is dead now, too, 
His ship was burned off Antofagasta. The boat he was 
in never came to port. 
After we had finished our teas, we sat about in the 
teashqi smoking. One of the third voyagers — he be- 
longed to a little bark called the Cowdey — was chaffing 
Kitty, and, asking her to marry him. The others were 
yawning, and h.'sidnig a, Dover court. One of them was 
reciting the story of William and Mabel. Another was 
singing a song iiopular at sea._ Its chorus ends, “Love is 
a charming young boy.” It is a very pretty song, with 
a jolly tune. /Another was singing “The Sailor’s 'Wives,” 
a very terrible ballad, with a tune which is like a gale 
of wind. It was regular Reefer’s Delight, Dover Court 
and Seaman’s .hancy. That is, there were “all talkers 
and no hearero” “ah singers and no listeners,” “all 
friends and no favor.” M 
Presently, a wild-looking lad, whom his mates called 
Jimmy, got up from his chair and went to the piano. He 
began to play a dance tune to which I had often danced 
■n ^ the days long before. He played it with a deal of 
spirit, partly because he was a good player, partly be- 
cause the tune moved him, for the same reason that it 
moved myself. Coming, as it did (on the top of all that 
silly chatter), with its memories of dead nights, and lit 
rooms, and prelty women, it fairly ripped the heart out 
of me. You could see them stirred by it, though one or 
I wo of them laughed, and swore at the player for a 
dancing master. After he had finished his tune, Jimmy 
came over to me. I thanked him for bis music, and 
complimented him upon his claying. 
“.Ah,” he said, “you’re a first-voyager?” 
“Yes, ” I said. 
“Then you’re like a young bear,” he said, “with all 
your sorrows to come.” 
I replied with the sea proverb about going to sea for 
pleasure. 
“Where are you. bound?” he asked. 
“I unin, for orders,” .1 answered. 
“I was in Junin my first voyage,” he said. “Mv hat! I 
was in Junin. I was very near being there still.’’ 
“Were you sick?” I asked. 
“I was,” he said shortly. “I was that. Ah,” he went 
on bitterly, “you’re going to sea your first voyage. You 
don’t know what it is. I tell you, I was sick in Junin. 
1 lay in my bunk, with the curtain drawn, and the surf 
roaring all the time. It never let up, that surf. All the 
time I was ill it was going on. One long, long roar. I 
used to lie and pinch myself. I could have screamed out 
to hear that surf always going. And then there was a 
patch of sunlight on the deck. It almost drove me mad. 
She rolled, of course, for she was pretty near light. And 
that patch kept sliding back and to, back and to, back 
and to. I would see nothing but that patch all day. It 
w^as always yellow, and sliding, and full of dust. You 
don’t know what it is to be sick at sea. 
“Shall I tell you what it was made me well? I was 
lying there in my bunk, and there was a crack ship, one 
of Farley Brothers’ — Ramadan, her name was. She was 
homeward bound. She was next but one to us in the 
tier. You don’t know about the "West Coast? No? 'Well, 
when a ship’s homeward bound the crowd cheer — cheer 
every ship in the port; three cheers for the Hardy-Nute, 
three cheers for the Cornwallis, and the ship cheerecl 
answers b.nck one cheer. And when a ship sails all the 
ships m pert cheer her — three cheers for the Ramadan — 
and she answers back one cheer. One ship at a time, of 
course. And every ship in port sends a boat aboard her 
with a couple of hands to help her get her anchor. Well, 
the Ramadan was sailing, and I was lying in my bunk as 
sick as a cat. And there they were cheering ‘Three 
cheers for the Ramadan.’ And then the one cheer back, 
‘Hip, hip, hip, hooray.’ I tell you it did me good. 
“And there I was listening to them, and I thought of 
how prime they must be feeling to be going home, out 
of that Grd-forgotten sandhill. And I thought of how 
good the cheers mu.st have felt coming across the water. 
And I thought of them being sleepy in the night watch, 
the first night out, after having ‘all-night-in’ so long. 
And then I thought of how they would be loosing sail 
soon. You don’t know what it was to me. 
“And then I lieard them at the capstan, heaving in. 
You know how it is at the capstan? The bass voices 
seem to get all on one bar, and the tenor voices all on 
another, and the other voices each to a bar. You hear 
them one In^ one as they heave round. Did you never 
notice it? They were singing ‘Amsterdam.’ It’s the only 
chanty worth a twopenny. It broke me up not tO' be 
heaving round, too. 
“And when they come to get under sail, setting the 
foretopsail and I heard them beginning ‘There’s a dandy 
clipper coming down the river,’ I lit out .a scritch, and 
I out of my bunk to bear a hand on the rope. I was as 
w'eak as water, and I lay wdiere I fell. I was near hand 
being a goner. The first words I said was ‘Blow, bullies, 
blow.’ It was that chanty cured me. I got well after 
that.” 
He turned again to the piano and thumped out a thun- 
dering sea chorus. The assembled reefers paid their 
shot and sallied out singing into the windy streets, where 
the lamps were being lit. As we went we shouted the 
song of the sea: 
A-roving, 
A-roving. 
Since roving’s has been my ru-i-n, 
I’ll go no more a-ro-oving, 
With you, fair maid. 
— Manchester Guardian. 
Seafaring Blood. 
The nautical authority of the New York Times re- 
cently presented the proposition that in order to de- 
yelop_ into a good sailor a man must necessarily have 
inherited some seafaring blood. This proposition was 
resented in these columns, and there were had in 
mind_ such men as Admiral Deiyey, the latest, . and 
Admiral Farragut, the first admiral of the United States 
Navy. 'We take it all back now, however, and beg the 
Times’ pardon. An authoritative volume has appeared 
in regard to the life of Admiral Farragui, and it says 
that although “he was born in a log cabin on the Ameri- 
can frontier, during a period when the frontiersmen 
depended upon game for their meat,” nevertheless 
‘‘Major George Farragut, the Admiral’s father, had a 
license to operate a ferry at this point” — near Knox- 
ville, Tenn. What a blessed inspiration, that ferry!— 
Shipping Illustrated. - f 
