The Good Old Days

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 45, 4 February 1928, Page 9

The Good Old Days

More Authors at Sea (By R.H.F.) The following is published in continuation of what appeared... in last Saturday's “Tribune.”,.. It depicts the various voyagings of famous authors who at different times forsook their desks to “go down to the sea in ships,” ana recounts many little-known facts concerning outstanding literary men.

lu the spacious days of John Silver and “treasure Island,” or, to be exact, on Thursday, July 11th, 1754, a ship was near the Isle of Wight, she could do over eight knots with a gale behind her, but now had scarefy a breeze to move her. Her captain was a hard exprivateersman of 70, and her chief passenger was a gentleman of somewhat proud and commanding aspect. Though but 47, he was sinking under a complication of diseases, yet his courage never faltered and he retained sufficient vigour, when not treated with due respect, to threaten the steward with a bottle ,and to subdue the captain by mention of the law. He was Henry Fielding, J.P., hailed by his friends as “the greatest novelist the world has known.”

Suddenly consternation prevailed. With uproar and agitated oaths from the captain, the ship was hove to. The boatswain dung his clothes off and plunged into the sea. A kitten had fallen overboard There were three other cats on board, but that kitten had to be saved. “Pooh!” thought Fielding, “Had puss nine thousand lives instead of nine, they are all lost by this!” Indeed, when the boatswain climbed aboard, the kitten, which he had gripped in his teeth, was unconscious, and “its life was despaired of by all,” However, it recovered after being laid in the sun, and this rescue of the kitten is a pleasant piece of authentic British history.

The ship had left Rotherithe on June 30th, only three days after the captain had declared his intention to start. She was two days going to Deal; six days off Deal with a bead wind; three days going to Ryde; thirteen days off Ryde with a hiad wind; two days going to Tor Bay; six days in Tor Bay with a head wind; and ten days going the 770 miles from Tor Bay to Lisbon. Total, six weeks for 1070 miles, including 25 days at anchor.

Feilding had paid £3O for passages of himself, his wife, her lady compion, his daughter, and two servants but he also bought vast supplies of food and wine, much of which it was the custom to leave with the captain as a ferewell gift. Passing Woolwich, Fielding had noticed a huge ship being built there. Though he calls her the “Royal Anne,” it seems probable that it was the “Royal George,” which was ten years under construction, 1746-1756-“It is true, perhaps,” says Fielding, “that there is more of ostentation than of real utility in ships of this vast and unwieldy burthen.” The “Royal George” was a little smaller than the “Victory,” launched nine years late, and of about 3500 tons displacement. Now we feel virtuouat agreeing to build warships of only 37,000 tons actual displacement. Fielding regretted that warships were larger and more imposing than merchant ships. Since about 1885 that has changed. The largest liners are much largest than even the mighty “Hood,” of 41,200 tons displacement. LEE HUNT’S VOYAGES. In 1821, Leigh Hunt and his wife and family left the Thames for Italy in a brig of 120 tons, some two months later than the captain’s declared date of departure. This brig was three days going to Ramsgate; nearly three weeks at Ramsgate with a head wind; and eleven days going from Ramsgate to Dartmouth in a frightful gale. Leigh Hunt w’roto that “Fifteen hundred sail (colliers) were wrecked on the single coast of Jutland. Next year there were between 1400 and 1500 sail less upon Lloyd’s books, which, valued at an average of £l5OO, made a loss of two millions of money.” He had sailed on Shelly’s advice. “The sea was to him a pastime; he fancied us bounding over the waters, the merrier for being tossed.” The Hunts went to Plymouth and stayed there nearly five months, finally embarking in another vessel that got them to Italy in about 44 days. Hunt wrote of the captain: “His enthusiasm on behalf of his brother tars and the battles they had fought was as robust as his fame, and he surprised us with writing verses on the strength of it. Very good ‘heart’ and ‘impart’ verses they were too, and would cut as good a figure as any in the old magagines.” Returning m 1825, the Hunts took a shorter sea passage. “We set out from Calais in the steam boat, which carried us to London, energetically trembling all the way under us.” DARWIN ON THE DEEP. In 1833 the young naturalist, Darwin, was off Cape Horn in the 10-gun brig “Beagle,” of 237 tons, about 100 feet long and 24 feet wide, with a height between decks of only 4 or a feet. After a desperate struggle for 24 days in which the brig was nearly swamped by one huge wave, Captain Fitzroy (Governor of New Zealand, 18-43-1845) gave up and ran for shelter, afterwards going through the Straits of Magellan to Chili, where a tremendous earthquake was experienced. The “Beagle” reached New Zealand at the end of 1835, and though Darwin was very grateful for the hospitality of the Rev, W. Williams and his hearty Christmas dinner near the Bay of Islands, he wrote, on sailing for Australia: “I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found at Tahiti: and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society. Neither is the country itself attractive. I look back to one bright spot, and that is Waimate with its Christian inhabitants.” At Hobart Town (population 13,826), Van Dieman’s Land, in 1836, ffrri-i -’•*» impreszed to find two

steamers running in the harbour, the engines of one having been built locally. THACKERAY’S VOYAGES. Thackeray was something of an artist, poet, and humourist, as well as a novelist. In 1844 he went to the Mediterranean in the P. and 0. paddie steamer “Lady Mary Wood.” Some articles he wrote for “Punch” were evidently “founded on fact,” and his deck-view drawing, “a masterpiece of perspective” as he proudly called it, makes the ship look several hundred feet longer than she was. “Further away by the quarter-deck ladder you see accurate portraits of Messrs- MacWirther and MacMurdo, of Oporto and Saint Mary’s, wine merchants; and far, far away on the quarter-deck, close by the dark helmsman, with the binnacle shining before steadfast eyes and the English flag streaming behind him (it is a confounded head wind) you see—o, my wilding beating, my too susceptible heart—DOLORES! ’ She is a little far off in the picture, but by the aid of a microscope, my dear sir, you may see every lineament of her delicious countenance. . Delores was not like your comman, mincing Englisji girts—she had alwaiw a repai'-ee and

a joke upon her red lips which made every one around her laugh—some of these jokes I would repeat, were it not a breach of confidence .and had they not been uttered in the Spanish language, of which I don’t understand a word.” VOYAGE TO AMERICA. In 1852 Thackeray went to America in the Cunard liner “Canada,” a wooden paddle steamer of 1820 tons, 11] knots. After his second visit in 1855 he returned in the American Collins liner “Baltic,” also a wooden paddle steamer but of 2860 tons and 13 knots. She was one of four sister ships, costing over £165,000 each, built in 1849 to “lick creation.” but more particularly the creations of the Cunard line. Amongst daring innovations on board were a smokingroom, bathrooms, and a barber’s shop. Twn or three years later the Collins line collapsed, but the Cunard is still with us, and is said to be about to build a decord liner of 66,000 tons—with a bathroom. They always were terrible fellows, the Americans. In 1828 they were said to he building a three-decker of 180 guns, all 90 pounders, when the finest British ships had about 120 guns, mostly 32 pounders, but apparently the monster never materialised.

THE SOUTHERN STATES. In the Southern States m 1855 Thackeray gives a view of slavery that suggests that it was not its abolition that made the Southerners poor, so much as their vast loss in “blood and treasure” in the war of a few years later. “1 saw on holidays black gentlemen and ladies arrayed in such splendour and comfort as freeborn workmen in our towns seldom exhibit. In a house in a Southern city you will find fifteen negroes doing the work which John, the cook, the housemaid, and the help, do perfectly in your own comfortable Loudon house. And these fifteen negroes are the pick of a family of some eighty or ninety; twenty are too sick or too old for work, let us say; twenty too clumsy; twenty are too young, and have to be nursed and watched by ten more- And master has to maintain the immense crew to do the work of half a dozen willing hands.” Thackeray’s remarks on the perils of fires and boiler explosions in the Mississippi steamers such as young Mark Twain steered at about that lime, were well founded on grim facts ■ -‘When pur huge, tall, white pasteboard castle of a steamer began Io wor kupstream every limb in her creaked, and groaned, and quivered,

so that you might fancy she would burst right off. Would she hold together, or would she split into ten millions of shivers? 0. my home and children! . . . On our journey up the Mississippi, 1 give you my honour we were on fire three times, and burned out cook-room down. The neck at night was a great fireworks—the chimney spouted myriads of stars, which fell blackening on our garments, sparkling on to the deck, or gleaming into the mighty stream through which we laboured—the mighty yellow stream with all its snags.” REMINISCENCES. To descend from the voyages of great men, I can recall a pleasant passage from Cork to Glasgow in the peaceful pre-war days. Our ship, the "Portland,” of 1138 tons, lelt Cork at 6.30 p.m. on October 17th. We had Irish cattle and Highland soldiers on board, and as we moved off a few m .re Highlanders scampered after us, hoping for a chance to jump aboard somewhere, but got left behind. We foamed down a river, and into a large dark harbour, outside of which, in the night, were some lumpish Atlantic waves, that made the "Portland” feel smaller, but she climbed over them easily enough, ami soon got round a corner into smooth water- Next day the weather remained fine. The ship was of obsolete design, as the saloon and cabins were right aft, but there was a good clear sweep of deck, and she did 14 or 15 knots without showering smuts and cinders all over us, or vibrating excessively. There was plenty of room for the few saloon passengers. There was an old Scotsman who had commanded schooners in the region of Singapore ,and a younger man with a scar on one wrist from the spear of a Dervish, who had not lived long enough to boast of it. The captain was a very friendly but dignified Scotsman, patiently enduring a gumboil, who asked us on to the bridge where he gave my mother a tampstood to sit on. The few otjier lady passengers were all of that resolute type that insists upon being seasick, or at least invisible, for every moment of a sea voyage, tegardless of the ocean’s flat calm. In the extreme bows stood a Highlander playing the pipes, and apparently watching for the first appearance of Scotland. A young maa raced round the promenade deck with an appreciative collie dog on the chair 1 could have taken the dog for a run if I had liked. The Irish cattle, of course, had the best quarters amidships, and from the saloon table they could be seen standing placidly in their stalls. Next morning we were in the Clyde at a wharf by a sister ship, having got there somehow, and in a dense fog. The captain spoke some kindly and fatherly words of advice to a young seafarer of some sort who was going ashore. The distance from Cork was 430 miles, and the saloon fare 17/6, plus 2/- a meal, so the resolutely seasick saved money. The ‘‘Portland” was afterwards, I believe, sunk in a collision in the Clyde, and in 1917 the sea between cork and Glasgow was infested with mines and IT boats, terrors that the heroes rhymed of by Leigh Hunt’s captain never had to face.