Around the Horn in a Square-Rigger 
By JOHN TREADWELL NICHOLS 
O NCE it used to be a common practice, be¬ 
fore settling down to business, for a 
man, just as now he makes a European 
tour or perhaps a trip around the world, to take 
a long sea voyage on some sailing ship. Alas, 
those good old days are going now, and after 
the completion of the Panama Canal the oppor¬ 
tunity for such a cruise will be still more di¬ 
minished. I therefore consider myself fortunate 
in having sailed out from New York in the year 
1906, a one hundred and thirty-four days voyage, 
in one of the few remaining square-rigged ves¬ 
sels under the American flag, an iron bark of 
977 tons. 
It was the beginning of August and New York- 
stood gasping in the grip of the heat. For days 
the ship had been alongside her wharf, near the 
Battery, and every kind of merchandise finding 
its way into her, while she settled lower and 
lower into the water and down to her lines. 
Finally the job was completed, we were ready, 
and, early one morning, away for the open sea— 
out through the Narrows, past the Hook and 
Navesink Highlands behind it. in the wake of 
the busy, officious tugboat. The shouting sailors 
got the square sails on her one after another, 
while the Jersey shore fell away to starboard 
and the Long Island shore to port, and finally 
the tugboat turned back, and we stood out over 
the curve of the earth and out of the world for 
foiu months and a half. Seventeen men cooped 
up in a ship, no wonder the sailor ashore is a bit 
reckless and care-free. Drunk or sober he will 
not fall from aloft or slip overboard into the 
sea, and at his own free will can move toward 
any point of the compass indefinitely. 
Just a few words about a square-rigged ship. 
I had always supposed, before sailing in one, 
that its main deck was considerably higher 
above the water than it is. One is so accustomed 
to see them ih port without a cargo. We were 
loaded light, but even so it was perfectly possi¬ 
ble to stand between the bits, aft on the lee side 
of the main deck, and, leaning against the bul¬ 
warks, fish floating gulf-weed from the sea with 
a long-handled net. T have made a voyage on 
the same ship when she was loaded “as deep as 
she would swim,” and in heavy weather would 
roll her bulwarks under water, so that barrels of 
it went frothing and bellowing back and forth 
across the main deck, to the tune of clanking 
Scuppers, the weird rattling laughter of the loose 
rivets that hounded along inside her hollow 
metal yards as she rolled and lurched, and the 
howling of the gale in the rigging. It was glo¬ 
rious ! And the men working in oil-skins on the 
deck had to watch lively or they would have 
1 een caught and bumped about unmercifully by 
the seas. 
Masters will tell you of how close their ship 
can sail to the wind, but except under the most 
favorable conditions square-riggers do not make 
more than about square to the wind. * They 
would never get to windward if it were not that, 
as the breeze shifts this way or that, they are 
kept always on the most favorable tack, and 
thus go about anywhere they please, excepting 
only when the weather is so heavy that sufficient 
sail to prevent drifting to leeward can not be 
carried. 
Ashore wind and weather arc of little mo¬ 
ment, at sea they are all important. Fortunately 
they are also more easily understood. And less 
capricious. Our course lay well to the eastward, 
passing some hundreds of miles north of Ber¬ 
muda, so that we might cut down our longitude 
while westerly winds favored. Nearer the equa¬ 
tor, trade winds, more or less from the cast, 
prevail. Their initial impulse is a cool draft to¬ 
ward the heat equator. This is effected by the 
rotation of the earth, and so acquires a greater 
or less amount of easterly character. 
So for a week or two, the wind mostly favor¬ 
ing, we drove east-southeast through the hot, 
sticky Gulf Stream and floating bits of sargasso 
weed which spread far east of it across the 
Western Ocean, till finally the breeze died away 
and the ship lay in calms and light airs, waiting 
for the northeast trades. Their coming marked 
the end of weed-flecked water. 
How much interest the North Atlantic would 
lose were there no sargassum. Millions of tons 
of the stuff float scattered at the surface, in 
single pieces and in masses or great long bands. 
One can scoop it in with a net, and see the many 
live creatures that are hidden in and come aboard 
with it, different crabs and shrimps and'some 
true fish. One kind of fish is adorned with funny 
tags and protuberances, and its pale, yellowish 
color, mottled with black, must be well nigh in¬ 
visible among the weed, to the eyes of preda¬ 
ceous fishes. Far out to the eastward a certain 
mottled pipe fish was particularly common, a 
long, dry animal, like a small stick, also very in¬ 
conspicuous. One day a little porcupine fish 
came swimming along and was scooped aboard. 
It swelled up outrageously, and long thin spines 
stuck out all over it. For any hungry monster 
to have eaten such a morsel must have seemed 
a good deal like sucking a chestnut burr. 
Characteristic of the open sea are the flyin 
fish. Especially is this true of warm weather an 
the trade winds, where a good fresh breeze i 
the rule. Days may go by without a bird an> 
nothing to enliven the face of the .water bit 
these. They spring up at the ship’s bow 0 
alongside and sail away, singly or in schools, am 
with the sun gleaming on their dazzling whit 
lower parts, are a beautiful sight. It is thei 
defence against the meat-hunting fishes—fi 
spring into the air and sail away like birds. Bu 
all too soon gravity pulls them back again, am 
I am afraid sometimes the dolphin or bonito ii 
following below, ready for them when they fal 
into the water. Sometimes they drop down til 
their tails touch the brine, and that membei 
promptly starts propeller work again, so that tin 
fish shoots on and up, and prolongs its flight ; 
space. In the night, when flying fish can probably 
not see so well where they r are going, they 11011 
infrequently drop aboard ship, and what a finq 
breakfast they make in the morning, all crisp 
and fried. 
Anything fresh is good at sea. Canned foods 
may taste about as good as the real thing ashore. 
1 tit when one gets nothing else they arc a delu¬ 
sion and a sham. The good old staples, “salt- 
horse'' and beans, arc preferable. It is indeed 
good fortune when large predaceous fishes of the 
dolphin or bonito type are caught. By dolphin 
I mean the fish “dolpin” of the sailors, not the 
mammal, which should be called a pointed nosed 
porpoise and exists under the name “dolphin" 
chiefly in books. Not infrequently such fish 
come about the ship and swim in her wake, 
alongside, or—a favorite place—at the bows. To 
catch them one climbs down to the martingale 
or out on to the jibboom. The lure used is com¬ 
monly a bit of wood draped with a white rag. 
This is dropped into the water and then jerked 
out again before the fish has a chance to get a 
good look at it, and sometimes proves very ef¬ 
fective. Perhaps it is mistaken for a flying fish 
Bright metal “squids,” such as are used in troll¬ 
ing along our coast, sometimes take the place 
of a white rag, and again fish are caught by 
trolling from aft with “squid” or rag, which, 
following along out there behind the ship, hour 
after hour, is very likely' to tempt the appetite of 
some hungry prowler that crosses her wake. The 
dolphin is a slender, beautifully colored, vora¬ 
cious animal, reputed one of the swiftest that 
swims salt water, and resembling remotely the 
bluefish that are caught in such large quantities 
each summer off the south shore of Long Island 
and elsewhere along the coast. In profile outline 
it tapers fairly uniformly all the way from the 
shoulder to the tail, and so presents quite a dif¬ 
ferent figure from the conventional fish, with 
greatest depth somewhere amidships. The old 
males have a very vertical forehead. Bonitos, on 
the other hand, are robust and very meatv for 
