Festivities in a Windjammer

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 147, 19 December 1927, Page 27

Festivities in a Windjammer

By BOYD CABLE

ASK any half-dozen old wind-jammer-men to tell you about their last Christmas at sea in t sail, and you'll almost cer-

tainly get as varied and contrasting a set of experiences as you'd got from any similar number of men in any one other life.

One, maybe, will tell you of a Christmas in The Trades, of the ship driving along with every stitch set, a gleaming pile of snow-white canvas pyramiding up to her trucks, of a wide vista of deep blue sea crisping in little flashes of silver white, of the great inverted bowl of flawless blue overhead with a.few fleecy cottonwood clouds doing their best to race the ship to the clear horizon.

They will tell you, lingering on the pleasant memories the tales recall, of a wiiid so steady that for days and nights on end there was no need to touch tack or sheet, when the total of the day's work on the sails was a, few minutes going round giving a little pull here and there to pick up any slack of the ropes stretching ever so slightly under the steady strain; they will tell you of the blazing Bunshine tempered by the cool wind, of the smother of foam pouring out from the- cut-water, the tall masts heeling slightly and swaying monotonously up and down over the long smooth swells.

That, they will say, was the sort of Christmas Day worth living, if ever one was at sea. The Day, of course, is a holiday—a Sunday upon which no work ■ is done save what is necessary for the I safe handling of the ship, and because this is the rule that has obtained at sea for generations, the Day is much the same as it was to our fathers and grandfathers. MERRY START. Down there in The Trades, the men will be starting the Day with a merry sluicing down of each other with buckets of clear sparkling salt water The apprentices will be doing the same with an extra bit of skylarking thrown in, and the officer of the watch will be looking for'aid from the poop breakrail watching the fun. From the galley stove-pipe a plume of smoke will be streaming, and from the door will be drifting an appetising odour of cooking food—of food so course and dirty that those ashore would turn faint at sight and scent of

it—and yet to salt-edged appetites is i savoury enough. The galley odours will be the more month-watering because they will be tinged with the perfume of some rashers of rather rancid bacon for the cabin table, and, most delicious of all, a whiff of something that smells like real coffee instead of the concoction for the fo'cVl which smells and tastes of nothing recognisable, but yet is good enough this hungry morning. After breakfast there is nothing to do, except, maybe, that little pull on the braces here and there to take up tho suspicion of a wrinkle in this sail or that which the eagle-eyed mato itches to faul flat again. There will be a "duff" for tho Christmas dinner—the usual Sunday duff of flour and water, and—if tho "doctor" bo skilled enough at his trade or generous enough with his stores —a few spoonfuls of grease and a bit of baking powder, with an extra handful of raisins in honour of the day. LITTLE TIT-SITS. If the Old Man is the right sort and the cabin stores wrll run to it, there may be a tit-bit of an extra from aft— two or three pots of jam or tins of syrup, or even (although this is almost too good to be true), a bag of onions hand-picked out by the steward as slightly too mouldy for the captain's table, but rejoiced over for'ard and eaten raw, skins and all, rather than have an atom of the rare flavour wasted in cooking. Assuredly, there will be a tot of rum all round, and likely enough, a bit of swapping between the apprentices and tho men, of rum for syrup or onion.

In the midst of our joy and feasting let us vision other days when the shadows of ihe past gently stir -within us emotions and sentiments both tender and dear.

Then, feeling gorgeously full fed, all hands will tako to their pipes, light up, and 101 l round, and talk of other and loss happy Christmas Days. On a happy ship there will be a foofoo band in the dog-watches, a concertina or mouth-organ perhaps as the leader, the apprentices prominent with paper-and-a-comb trumpets, and a preponderance of biscuit-tin and iron spoon cymbals and triangles and drums that would astound a Queen's Hall orchestra.

Thcro will bo songs and choruses, chanties and fore-bitters, the oldest or. sea songs and the newest of laud tunes picked up in the last port from tho gramophone or dance-hall guitars.

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And if the old chanties especially be well sung, and "Hame Dearie, Hame," or "Rolling Home" be amongst the most tenderly rendered, it will be a stouey-hcarted Old Man who doesn't call tho steward and pass the word to "splice the main brace" in another tot of rum.

Then the watch below will turn in, and the watch on deck will sit about and talk- softly and look up at the darkblue, star-dusted Heavens, and listen to the thrum of the steady wind in the sails and gear, and hum the air of "Hame, Dearie, Hame" very softly to themselves again .. . and that Christmas Day will be over. __ ANOTHER WAY. That's the one way of it. Bat there is another side. Listen to the wind howling in your own chimney on Christmas night. Try to imagine that roar and whistle magnified a million fold, try to picture a ship labouring wildly under its weights across a wilderness of tearing seas surging out of the darkness, bursting in a welter of flying foam against the ship, leaping in over her bows or sides, filling the deck with a sweeping cataract of icy water that lifts a man from his feefi and rolls him in the scuppers, helpless as a kitten, in a mill-race.

It is easy to say "Try to imagine," but it is impossible for any to imagine unless they have looked on and felt what a howling gale in mid-winter on the North Atlantic is like. There, it will be a lucky Christmas Day if the ship has anything but the bitterest weather, and the worst of heart-breaking toil to give her unhappy crew—and if the day is not one of a long series of the same sort.

No man will have a dry stitch in his kit or on his back; no man will have a bone in his body that does not ache with fatigue. The day may be spent lighting to shorten sail, trying to cling to a madly jerking yard and spare a hand from its hold long enough to grab at a fold in the board-stiff sail, stooping a sou-westered head to the lashing rain and sleet that blinds any eyes looking into it for an instant, crawling about a spider's web rigging with the wind trying like a clawing wild beast to tear a man from his grip. Bad enough aloft, you might call it even worse on deck, where the water sweeps to and fro anything from six inches to sis feet deep, where men hang to a

ropo when a turn has been taken round the pin, fight to keep their feet until the water drops enough to let them snatch another haul or two, take a turn and hang on once more against the next ravening brute of a sea that roaTs in over the rail upon them. CHEERLESS DINNER.

Tho galley fire quite likely has been washed out, and tho Christmas dinner is of flint-hard ship's bread, cold tinned food and cold water. - No duff that day, nor for many, maybe, before or after it. There is tho tot of grog, and few staunch enough teetotallers to refuse its fiery comforting glow. No foo-foo band in the dog-watch here, no idle chat, or lazy smoke. The watch below, when (and if) released will stagger to their berths, pull long sea boots from their numbed feet, cast off tho soul-and-body lashing rounds of their oilskins, and roll wearily into their wet bunks, sinking as deep asleep as dead men, with the one wish only that the galo will hold steadily enough to make no need of shortening or loosing saiL

Listen to the wind in the chimney of your snug home ashore, draw the curtains close against that chilly little draught, stir the fire to a cheery blaze, gather around it in the flickering rosy glow: So you make the picture that is in the heart of most windjammer men at sea tins Christmas night, the scene he dreams, whether he sleeps lulled by the gentle swing of the trade winds' swells, or screwed ana jammed into his bunk against the wild lift and plunge that nearly hurls him out of his wetchilled blanket.-

It's a rare enough windjammer man who doesn't think of you ashore, cheery over your roast turkey dinner, cosy around your fire—as it is the English landsman ,who spares a thought for tho windjammer men afloat this Christmas night.