GRACE HARWAR, AHOY!

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21100, 6 February 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

GRACE HARWAR, AHOY!

BY W. B. WZBB.

LIFE ON A WINDJAMMER.

Those splendid ahipa. Each with her grace, her glory. Her memory of old songs Or comrade'a atory. Still in my mind the image of life's need; Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed. And one of the last of those splendid ships i 3 with ua now. To those of us who have trodden the decks and lived the life, her coming is like the introduction of a stately minuet into a programme crammed with frenzied jazz. Probably most of us will never again have the oportunity of touching one of those links with a past whose memory we treasure as something elevating our own experiences above the common. To the layman her maze of gear ia bewildering in its complexity, but to us eacn buntiine and clewline and downhaul, each lazy tack, sheet and brace has its known function and association with the toil and danger of the days that are gone. Beautiful she is aa a slender horsewoman and her mount, but her beauty haa nop kept her kind secure from the merciless competition that marka an age of mechanical progression. It could not be otherwise, so we must perforce bow to the inevitable, and on occasions like this indulge in a few i regreta and let our thoughts run riot a space among the memories of youth. Last Sunday I rode with a friend to the highest point of Ocean View Road, and we looked out to sea, toward Colville and the plainly discernible Barrier. Land and water seemed to meet in unaccustomed harmony, and the sea itself rivalled the blue overhead for depth of colour. We looked for the ship that was in my thoughts; a sooty smudge here and there, streaming a dirty pennant across the blue, mocked our eager quest. But I could picture her in my mind' 3 evo as she would be on such a day, her topsails breathing and sighing, her chain sheets clanking against her lower mast..?, the ocean swells lapping at her scupper-holes, her wheel kicking idly in the helmsman's hands as he ponders on the hazy coastline that represents to him a foreign strand whereon his feet may tread a while ere the sea claims him again. Deliberate Arrival. There is a fascination about this leisurely approach to a strange coast that is lacking from the shipboard life of a steamer. The latter rushes at her objective. Perhaps the watch below are asleep when the anchor drops and they see only the smoke and the hurly-buriy of tile city spread before them. The windjammer comes up to her destination with a deliberation enforced by the circumstance of head winds and calms, takes a sip from tfie proffered cup and retires to ponder over the flavour ere pointing her jibboom once more to the land. And so the helmsman sighs as he looks aloft and eves the impotently rippling canvas; sighs as he sees the journey's end within reach, yet unattainable. Many the hour 3 he has spent at that self-same wheel, vet none so long as on thi3 particular summer afternoon. His thoughts wander back along the way he has come with his ship. The loading of her dusty cargo, and the anxiety of himself and" his shipmates to be off to sea, away from the dust and the filth. The settling down into the routine of watch and w-atch, the commencement of work with the rising of the sun; the dogwatch hours of relaxation. Worth living for, those dog-watch hours have been! He has laughed and quarrelled, danced with and cursed his mates, worked with them and played with them, and weighed them in tha balance of his own judgment. Good shipmates, he pronounces them. What can a man say more ? And then the nights beneath the stars, the ocean black below, and whispering the sky above, as black, star-studded; the jibboom swaying across the horizon, white foam surging to leeward from the ship's hurrying forefoot. Aloft, scarce less black than the night itself, strains the canvas in its bolt ropes, the rigging hums to the touch of the chill breeze, and the mastheads dance among the stars. How vast seems the Universe; how near the Infinite, the silent ship and her shadowy crew. Shadowy they are, for save for the silhouette of the helmsman, perched on his grating, as her stern lift 3 above the sea's rim, and the dark and sullenlypacing figure of the mate tramping out his four-hours' watch, the decks appear to be deserted. The mate pauses at the helmsman's elbow, peeps in the dimlylighted binnacle, eyes the dark shadows that are the mizzen topgallant-saii'.s, glances at the weather horizon, and slips down the poop ladder on to the main deck. "Lee Fora Brace!" A whistle shrills, there comes an answering shout from the gloom for'ard, and a voice barks, " Lee fore brace!" Shadows rise from the main hatch or stagger sleepily from beneath the fo'c's'le head. A moment, and the night resounds to the doleful pulley-hauley song of the port watch as they toil on the braces. Blocks creak, the yards swing a trifle, the weather brace tautens, and the watch belay and pass on. They growl as they pull and pull as they growl, for who but the most stony-hearted of mates would want to " sweat her up " on a night like this? A nap in his watch on deck is the dearest thing to a sailor's heart, and he hates to be disturbed for trivialities lilte a shift of wind or a threatening squall. But the task 13 accomplished in short order, one bell tinkles from the poop, and is echoed throatOy by a larger companion on the fo'c's'le head. The fo'c's'le door onens and a beam of light falls on the foredeck as a man enters to call the starboard watch from their dreams. " How's she heading?" an anxious voice queries. " Full and by!" comes the answer, and the questioner broaMies a prayer of thanksgiving. His heart ia set on a particularly soft plank he has picked out for his own beneath the fo'c's'le head, where he will be able to resume his interrupted slumber. Eight bells. A quick mustering of the watches at the break of the poop, a perfunctory, " Relieve the wheel and lookout!" a merging of shadows into shadows and another watch is ended and begun. Remembered Days. But these are rare nights; wnyports on the voyage to be remembered and treasured as bright spots in the hard, exacting round that is the common lot of the windjammer's crew. Comes the time when the spicy breezes of the Trades give place to the bitter squalls and thunderous surges of the sterner latitudes; when the voice of the gale shrieks through the quivering shrouds and tears the canvas from its gaskets; when the whole ship's beinc shudders to the pounding of the whelming seas that flood her reeling decks. Days these when men snatch what sleep they may, and every passage of the deck is fraught with peril. Days there are of struggling aloft, hampered by heavy oilskins and seahoot.s, the wind flattening one's body in to the weather rigging with the pressure of a giant palm. Out on the swaying yard, sliding along the sagging footropes, the watch string themselves to battle desperately with a threshing topsail. Hail and sleet beat down on them and chill them to the bone. The watch is half gone ere. the sail is stowed. Back then to the deck to pull and haul waist deep in cascading seas, to dodge for safety as a green mountain towers above the topgallant rail and tumbles on board. But these days pass in their turn, and thankful hearts may at last turn to the mystic land that stretches athwart the horizon and bids tha wanderer pause and rest fi«r wings.