Going io Sea. 
BY C. G. DAVIS. 
HE reasons why sailors go 
to sea are as varied and 
comical, some of them, as 
any one would care to read 
about. In some cases 
it is pathetic, in some 
disgusting and nearly al¬ 
ways more or less brutal. 
The foremast hand rep¬ 
resents an engine out of 
which the most work is to 
be gotten by the use of fist, boot or impolite 
English forcibly applied. I had a good oppor¬ 
tunity to study this subject in the course of my 
voyages. Of the seven men who were my 
shipmates on the first trip, one was a college 
professor whose rough exterior so completely 
hid all appearances of learning one never would 
suspect him of even being able to write his own 
name. And he even carried out this deception 
by making a X cross mark, as illiterate sailors 
do to represent their signature on the ship’s 
articles in signing on for a voyage. 
But one day as I lay sick and delirious with a 
fever on the coast of Chili, he nursed me back 
to health, cleaned out the other six men who 
sat smoking and making the room foul with 
tobacco smoke with every door and window 
closed tight and an old smoky lamp throwing a 
dim light into the box-stall-Hke bunks, in one 
of which I lay sick, and showed his true char¬ 
acter. Jim watched me like a mother, and when 
the crisis passed and I became conscious again, 
Jim opened the doors of his hidden past life 
and amused me with reminiscences of the days 
when he was well-to-do at college. But when 
I tried to get him to tell me more when I re¬ 
covered he was as close and silent on that sub¬ 
ject as a clam. 
Joe, a young Holland boy, had run away to 
sea when about fifteen years old, and then at 
the age of twenty-seven had never yet been 
home. Once he went back to his native town 
after a long voyage, with his pockets full of 
money. He was glad indeed to again see the , 
old familiar scenes in his native town. Every 
one he met that he knew hailed him as a long 
lost,, and of course in his western world style 
Joe invited them into a saloon to have a friendly 
drink. He got to the saloon at the corner of 
the street where his mother lived and there 
met so many he knew he treated all until he 
awoke next morning in a back room of the 
saloon, where they put him to sleep, minus 
every cent, and was so ashamed of himself, he 
slunk back to the docks and went again to sea. 
Bill, a long, thin, cadaverous looking Finn, 
with a beard like a Jew down to his belt, had 
been a rope-maker until death in his family left 
him alone and despondent, so he took to the 
Peter. a Spaniard, took hurriedly to the sea 
after a fight in his native town in which he used 
his stiletto too freely on a man with whom he 
had an argument. 
Hans, a little midget of a German, with blue 
eves and such an abundance of hair he looked 
like a babboon when bad weather prevented 
him cutting it for a couple of weeks, blandly 
told us he was arrested and sent to Sing Sing 
for falling asleep on a rich man’s doorstep. So 
no one pressed him for a true reason, enough 
that he was a good cobbler, having learned 
that trade while in “jug” and would sometimes 
mend our shoes. 
Larsen, was a beach-comber, shipped just be¬ 
fore we sailed from Chili for home to take the 
place of old Bill who had got lost in the moun¬ 
tains when we all deserted and ran away from 
the ship because Hve were half starved on the 
voyage out and saw no extra provisions put 
aboard to warrant getting any better food com¬ 
ing home. Larsen was a good example of what 
befalls a sailor even here in civilized America. 
We anchored off Pigeon Point in the Dela¬ 
ware and were paid off at Wilmington. We got 
our money at about io o’clock in the morning, 
and at noon when we took the train to Phila¬ 
delphia, where we were boarding, Larsen had to 
be lifted by the head and heels into the baggage 
car by the “crimps” from the sailor’s boarding 
house where he was staying. The crimps had 
his money earned by over four months’ work 
at sea and Larsen was that night put aboard an 
outward bound ship—that’s how he went to sea 
that trip. 
It was nearly a year after I came back from 
my first voyage. I sat one day on a high stool 
at a draughting board in the office of a naval 
architect’s office on the top floor of the Wash¬ 
ington Building, at No. i Broadway, drawing 
plans of yachts. From our high elevation we 
could look out of the window onto New York 
Bay, lying spread out like a map below us, and 
see all the shipping, an ever-changing kaleido¬ 
scope of sea life. 
Just before noon the door opened and in came 
a young fellow whom I became acquainted with 
at a yacht race. I had entered our sloop yacht 
for a race one day. but could not get men 
enough to help me handle hqr, when one of the 
race committee introduced me to Ned, and I 
found him such a useful man on a boat tnat 
from then on he sailed every race with me. 
Well, Ned came in with a cheery “Hello! 
Stump!” 
“Hello!” I answered and shook his paw. 
“What’s up?” 
He looked at me a minute and said, “I’m 
going to sea.” 
“The deuce you are!” said I. 
“Yes,” he answered; “don’t you want to 
come along for a bit of salt-water sailing?” 
Well, say., if a man opened the door for a 
newly caged tiger, don’t you suppose that tiger 
would make a jump for his freedom? Well, I 
was just in that frame of mind. Day in and day 
out I was doing the same thing over and over. 
Ned's words were the only spark necessary to 
set off the fireworks. 
“Wait a minute,” said I; “go out in the hall 
and wait.” Ned went, and as the door closed 
I got up, went over to the boss and said, “What 
will you give me for my set of drawing instru¬ 
ments?” 
He was dumbfounded, but inside of ten 
minutes I persuaded him I meant it, had cash 
in my pockets for the instruments and what he 
owed me and joined Ned outside. 
That night we slept in a schooner’s forecastle 
off South street, shipped for a voyage to the 
West Indies. That’s how I went to sea the 
second time. It didn’t take us long to find a 
ship either. The little three-masted schooner J. 
Percy B—— lay at the second pier beyond 
Coenties Slip. She looked to be loaded, so 
we went aboard to see the captain. He had 
just gone ashore. “There he goes now,” said 
the man aboard, pointing to a round-shouldered 
man going along South street. We overhauled 
him at the corner and asked if he had his mates 
shipped yet. 
“Only carry one, an’ I got him,” was the 
reply. 
“Any chance forward then?” asked Ned. 
The old fellow eved us a minute, and then 
said, “Go up in Frisbee’s office if you want to 
go.” 
So up into Frisbee’s we went, where we were 
joined by two other sailors and all shipped for 
the trip. 
Ned and I got our clothes aboard that after¬ 
noon, much to the surprise of my folks, who 
had no idea I was contemplating going to sea— 
but then, neither had I that morning. 
Getting aboard Ins Donkey's Breakfast, as the Straw A runner helping a Sailor aboard with his Clothes. 
Mattress are Called. 
The Little Square Hox at the Foot of the Foremast A Truck Load of Mattresses and Clothes Bags going 
is the Sailor’s Home. aboard a Schooner. 
