Sea Memories.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 78, 28 September 1907, Page 19

Sea Memories.

The foulest river in the world it the Bchuylkill, where it floats the oil-filth dawn from Point Breeze to the Delaware, just where the city of Philadelphia disperses itstdf into straggling suburbs. Here are the great refineries of the Standard Oil Company, overhanging! wharves where the big ships of all the •' world lie up to take in "case Oil," generally for Japan and the other markets of the Far East. The ugly fenk steamers, with their funnels and deck - houses crowded aft over their rumps, throng the stream, and of tea enough .ono may see one or two huge sailing -ships filling up with this risky freight. , I remember one summer about ten years . ago when this reach of the Bchuylkill presented a sight such as ono seldom- sees. From the road above tho wharves one could look down uu the long, decks of a group of great sail»»jj ships, the leviathans of their world, wniy dtyarfed by those German excresKeaces -which ply around the Horn untler five, masts. The Andorhina was there, .with her midships bridge-deck *nd, twi 1 , nve hatches, laying a llank to ihe.quay which was not much less than. 150 yaids in length. Ahead of her Iky the'" Palgrave, an awful ark of & Chip, also with a midships bridge-deck, J."om which she could be steered when «he consented to be steered at alj. She had beon towed round from Boston, And had had trouble at tho mouth of die river when her forward capstan took charge and made havoc among the men jfrho manned it. Ahead of her again <ay a 'great- German four-master, one m'the. Rickmers family (I forgot which them), and ahead of her was yet Another whose name has escaped me. Then there was & beautiful American lull-rigged ship, a lovely model of a wooden vessel, and, berthed outside me Andorhina, the Glasgow four-ma§ted qarque,. the Vimeira. She was three Jjiiindred feet r long, with a burden of riome.^two thousand tons, and though ivo v?ho manned her were wont to think her no smq.ll shake? of a big ship she #as dwarfed there. -In, Colombo harbour people had come cp in boats to be shown over her as f6metb,ing rcmatkabie, and therefore it ißas something of a shock that I heard an apprentice from the Palgravo refoark, when, he came aboard viqiting the half-dick : "''l wish I was shipped on a; h3ndy little thing like this. />,Not long ago.'the Vimeira let go her HnchbrUn Faladdth Harbcrar as the pinner of a race from Sydney. Her opponent was the four : masted barque Port Jackson, angV'tfre Vimeira wins Dy covering' the fift—m thousand and oddmiles of sea in ninety-seven days. If Captain" Stevens still commands her and Mr. Gordon is sfiil chief mate, this is I6ss wonderful, fbt two more accomplished seaman never sailed under Square sails. Both were Scotchmen, •and the captain was a lean, keen, protty-inannered man, more like a clever 2|>rt* qf doctor to look at than a sailor. Be had/ nerves too, so it was said ; ..ttut -he made little enough of them on /lSmy an occasion when there was excuse atad to spare. He would come on deck in his oilskins, his long coatclosebuttoued about his meagre body, and , take a" twenty-four hour turn of driving his ship through a spell of ugly weather Without' fuming, a hair. .Gordon, the mate, was a grey old bull-dog of a man, roughe^d by thirty years of salt and Cea, with a deJicate-handed adroitness , in bis work that was wonderful to see in 4* man of so coarse a mould. In thj> half-deck wo hated him, and the' mate who is hated; by apprentices is commonly a most, efficient and exacting . officer.' 1 * -^ ; ' - li'is* easy 1 to quote • better records than that of the Vimeira for this particular passage ;'. the clipper daj'S are thick with " Ifceray *- But it 15- to be n6ticed=thafc the s oot built for racing. In theta days, when every enterprise must first justify itself commercially, a ship's- c^irgo capacity must alv/ays be a paramount consideration with her de1-'"' He his to reconcile speed with stowage room, and not till this is done can he' give himself over to the pleasure 6f sweet proportions and good model' ling. ,■> Flying light, as she was when J first saw her, nothing could have been uglier than the Vimeira. The streak of painted ports along her side then stood fifteen feet or so- above the .water; and ono siw how her flank rose straight like a wall, uitli no tumbleBorne to it at all. From the break «f her poop to the fo'c'sle head she had hardly a curve to speak of, and tlis lines of; her sheer were, shallow and flat cs compared With those of the crack abips of fifty years ago. Her lower masts and topmasts were in one piece, straight, spikps of steel ; save for her royal yards and gaff, there was not a wooden ,spar in all her gear. And whereas . the old ships could send fifty men aloft to shorten sail, the Vimeira rarried,-eis;hteen hands in the fo'c'slc, fpur, apprentices, carpenter and sailmaker, steward,, cook, three mates, and captain for all nev crew, To shorten sail in a- hurry, as whero a cyclone caught us in the latitude of Mauritius; was a job for all hands. It meant a ",v/hole watch aloft on one yard when one of. the courses ba^- to come in. And than, « when she was stripped and hove to, now she rould dip tho whole of her three-bundred-foo't side under and sooon the water in green to the depth 6t the rail, till no ono coald livo on - her main deck ! Good seamanship and a good crew will do-'mqeh, and whereas Captain Stevens supphsd the funnel, ho was careful to obtain as much of the latter as " was possible. Ofle could not im-agine*'a-crowd better than that, which tho Vimeira carried at the time J maderhy first Voyage with her. They wercr thinned at Barry Dock, and the story •wes that the Old Man hsd hunted them up one by one from the boardinghouses. They numbered eighteen, all good upStanding able-seamea, in the best sensfi, — wpat was infinitely more wonderful—all British. Twelve were Irish men, splendid strapping fellows, and the best sailors imaginable, since they added to mastery of their trade that good humour one cannot rely en in English , sailors. It would make an ordinary mate's mouth water to seethose fellows at work— say tightening up the gear in the first dog-watch after decks had been swept down. Nine of, them on a brace, and the line would come as straight as a bar as soon as the vre&thcr brace was let go. They not only did their work but they put a polish on if, and all with the most cheerful way about them. Wo of the half-deck gained as much as anybody by hiving them for shipmates, for those Irish taught us twice da much as the mates 'and the captain all put, together, and the lessons were a good deal more pleasant, too This wan at sea. In Colombo they •were given shore leave, and every single man had to be dug out agaip by the . police, ■ mastered by violence, and brought off to the ship under guard. Most of them wer» hoisted on board hugging trophies, tho spoils of riot M* destruction. I wonder if Colombo ■tifl rembmbcrft Ibem ! Good luck to the Vimeira, wherovor ahe goes ! She is a tough old girl, with a lot, of work aboard of her, and I, personally, was xity glad to see the last of -her. Bui thero are Woise ships afloat, and, perhaps not so Very many b«W*r one*. ■At any ratei she is dfiv*n hero and there about the world by

sailors in whose skill and courage is perpetuated and renewed the prowess of those men who broadened the charts of old and learned geography on the spot. — Perceval Gibbon, in St. James's Budget.