Yet even in the steamship this spirit
still prevails. Indeed, no more remarkable survival into
this age of steam of the old sea spirit, unstained,
untouched by modern undisciplined ideas, can be quoted
than the British Navy. Notwithstanding all the influence
of modern scientific development, with which, in all its
branches, the Navy is more familiar than any other
profession it yet preserves intact the old naval
traditions, and it is this fact which makes the navy as
it exists the most priceless jewel of the British Empire.
Beware, all landsmen who would meddle with that spirit of
the sea! It cannot be intelligible to those who are not
bred of salt water, for it is a product of the great
ocean, and like it, unfathomable. It has created there a
greatness scarcely realised, an efficiency and discipline
which in the nature of things are impossible on shore,
but at sea are put daily, hourly, to the test. For in the
navy, direct, prompt, cheerful, and fearless action are
the first conditions of existence; simplicity of life,
hardship and duty--a word too likely to be forgotten in
high states of civilisation are breathed with the very
air; incompetence is never excused, and means certain
ruin.
And that spirit goes shipmate with
steam elsewhere too upon the seas, to the credit of steam
and modern shipbuilding. The landsman, travelling by an
ocean liner, may get a glimpse of it if he pauses to
consider the steadfast figure on the bridge, or listens
to the meaning of the patient screws beating out the
knots astern. A thrill of pride in his own race may go
through him when he sees the wallowing tramp slouch by,
burrowing like a mole in the huge ocean banks and kicking
the icy clouds of spray aloft to fatten her frozen decks.
His heart may feel a genuine glow to bear the stories of
the deeds of the twenty thousand ton monster upon whose
deck he stands.
But, if he be of understanding mind,
something bigger will glow within him as he casts his eye
toward the little coaster that rises now and then into
under reefed canvas, or the tiny fishing-lugger, not long
as the smoking-saloon in which he sits, that meets a
hundred miles from land riding like a young gull over the
ridges of the seas.
'You see often enough a fisherman's
humble boat away from all shores, with an ugly black sky
above an angry sea beneath; you watch the grisly old man
the helm carrying his craft with strange skill through
the turmoil of waters, and the boy, supple-limbed,
weather-worn already, and with steady eyes that look
through the blast; you see him understanding commandments
from the jerk of his father's white eyebrow now belaying
and now letting go, now scrun himself down into mere
ballast, or bailing out death with a pipkin. Familiar
enough is the sight, and when I see it I always stare
anew, and with a kind Titanic exultation, because that a
poor boat with brain of a man, and the hands of a boy on
board, match herself so bravely against black heaven
ocean.' [Kinglake's Eothen]
But the ordinary man is probably
hurried on some great city, forgetful of that other world
of men which he just touched the fringe, not knowing that
he is passing by a quite other side of life, replete with
human interest, characterised by unrewarded courage and
unsung heroism, and rich in all the fruits which are
ripened in men in constant contact with the greatest
forces of Nature. For it is above all in the men who
handle sails that the self-reliance which is bred by
tempest, darkness, and the shadow of the Angel of Death
reaches its highest point. The seriousness, from this
point of view, of the loss of masts and yards to the Navy
has been fully recognised, and it has only been
reluctantly acceded to on account of the pressing
importance of other more essential forms of training. But
among the coasters and fishermen of the world the mast
and sail more than hold their own, and here the student
of the sea will find himself in a by-path of the modern
world, among the old thoughts, the old traditions, the
old methods, and the old virtues of the great seas. And
when this civilisation shall have condemned itself and
passed the way of others, the lugsail and the lateen will
still be navigating the deep, conned by other races, but
the same grim, great-hearted sailor men.
Combined with the strong conservatism
which characterizes it, there is along every coastline a
singular ability to modify custom to meet new
requirements, and a power of adaptation to different
conditions which is perhaps unsurpassed in any pursuit of
man. The study of the types of craft and rig which have
been developed by different races under varying
conditions becomes, from this point of view, one of
absorbing interest and value.
There is nothing sordid, cramped, or
unhealthy for body or mind in what a man may learn from
sailing boats. It is a subject, beyond most, shrouded
about by the immensities which are the 'vesture of the
Eternal.' Leading into the solitudes of Nature, and into
the presence of the Immeasurable, it must needs enlarge
men's natures, in a degree impossible in much of modern
Western life.
The man who handles sails must think
for himself and act for himself. When the fisherman
starts for his fishing grounds or the pilot turns
homeward again, there is no coach-road along which he can
drive a straight course. From the moment he begins to get
his anchor, he must be tide-dodging and sail-trimming;
his way he finds for himself across shoals and currents,
by day with the aid of keen eyesight and good memory, and
by night by the addition of an instinct for direction and
a power for estimating relative speeds of wind, tide, and
boat, which to the uninitiated are meaningless, and are
only attained by long practice and possession of the
sea-instinct.
Apart from the mere physical triumph
which man has in handling tackle, there is for the
sailing men the additional glory which is known to the
explorer, the soldier, and the huntsman, which has made
the wild nature life of the great continents exercise the
enduring attraction which it does to the men who have
lived the life--the glory, namely, of the pathfinder, the
man who must seek the road, dare the experiment, keep a
clear head, and understand a map more early than a
picture, which things are hidden for ever from the man
'who is carried.'
But more than these others, while all
his faculties are bent on picking up indications that
help to whereabouts, which at sea are ever less easy of
discernment than in any mountain country, he must be able
to detach one eye for the direction of the ever-shifting
wind, one hand for the constantly needed handling of his
ropes, and an added faculty or two for cheating or
utilising the tide or the breaking seas, as the case may
be.
And more than those others, too, he
must be prepared to blow up his own fire, get his own
meal, and make every one of a hundred possible necessary
repairs, amid darkness, tossing, and cold flying spray,
if called upon.
If any one would know to the full the
meaning of these things, let him ship on board a Bawley
boat from Leigh or Whitstable on an autumn morning, and
with no chart, but with a lead-line and with the
astounding memory of the skipper of the little boat, find
his way down to the Gunfleet and back. In all that
intricate network of sands and channels, given the hour
of the tide, the depth and the character of the bottom as
disclosed by the lead, a Bawley man will tell you exactly
where you are, although, as in the case of an old friend
of my own, he can neither read nor write, and has never
seen a chart.
In such scenes you may know the glory
of the pathfinder as truly as on the veldt, in the deep
jungle, or in the wide north-west. In this desolation of
the waters men find their brotherhood, as in all scenes
where they grip hand to hand with great
Nature.
The sailing-boat is one of the
simplest and most universal of human machines-cleanliest,
most delicate, most gentle, and amenable. It is a simple
reduction to practical uses of the highest and most
beautiful laws of physics, towards which all nations have
contributed, according to their abilities and the local
conditions to which they are subject. The man, be he
Chinaman or Malay, in the Mediterranean or Atlantic, who
beats to windward through intricate channels against a
lee-going tide, is staking his hand, eye, and brain, his
whole concentrated intelligence, against Nature herself,
turning against her own laws. There is no 'as you were'
at sea. A fathom too far, a little indecision, a mistake
of judgment, or ignorance of a single detail, whether of
the conditions of things beneath the water, or in the sky
to windward, or in the rigging overhead, or whether of
the eccentricities and behaviour under existing
conditions of the boat, may result in disaster, with any
result from a little loss of time and temper, to total
loss of ship and life. The punishment for inefficiency
and ignorance, even though they be excusable or
inevitable, never fails in Nature. But at sea it comes
remorseless, fierce, and sudden ; for the sea is a hard
taskmistress, and teaches her lessons with no sparing
hand.
The wide differentiation of type which
is observable in boat-building has been the result of the
efforts of different nationalities, and differently
constituted minds, to meet the peculiar requirements of
their own nautical surroundings.
A journey of a hundred miles along any
fairly populated coast will disclose some variation in
rig, or in build, or in both, prompted by some curious
tradition, or necessitated by some meteorological or
physical condition prevailing in the locality, and
affected almost invariably by other considerations of an
historical or practical kind.
Thus the directions and force of the
prevailing winds, the character of the shelter available,
the depth of water, the character of the 'sea' to be
generally encountered, and of the waters navigated, the
length of the voyages, the materials to be had for
building, the character of cargoes or methods of fishing,
are all factors in the development of characteristic
types. Though development and individual departure from
strict type are always going forward, there generally
remain certain well-marked peculiarities common to the
type, sufficiently distinctive to enable the student to
trace their descent back for at least several
generations, and in some cases to a comparatively ancient
date.
It is curious how many logs and
cruises, written by otherwise observant persons, are
barren of information on this subject. The traveller is
at pains to describe at length the arts and crafts and
histories of the peoples whom he meets with, but
boat-building and native seamanship he passes by as of no
importance and little interest.
The sailor relates in detail what he
eats and what he does in his own ship; how he is wet or
dry, or sleeps or wakes, sets sail or reefs; but so far
generally as his narrative goes, his own vessel appears
to be the only one upon the face of the waters, unless he
happens to meet a pilot or a lightship or a
yacht.
Yet the history of Mohammedanism, with
its extraordinary influence on Asia and its tremendous
consequences to Europe, is unintelligible without the
dhow and the lateen-yard; while the Malay race as it is
to-day without the prau could not have been.
These old-time vessels, the same
to-day as they have been for centuries, have altered the
history the world. It has yet to be seen whether the age
of steam will leave such permanent results upon the
distribution of race and thought as have these simple
sailing boats, which have carried the crescent and the
sword, and navigated and deeply influenced all the
quarters of the Old World.
Not less have the long clinker built
boats of the Northmen, and the strong, bluff-lined Dutch
craft, been part and parcel of the history of modern
Europe. Each in turn they have conferred that 'command of
the sea' which was essential to enable the races who
manned them to make and leave their mark on history. They
each have helped to build up that empire of the seas
which this country has inherited, and must retain, with
mankind. As long as she is to wield influence - they will
probably outlive our fleets and our empire, as they have
outlived the history which they made.
When our tall steamships are
scrap-iron and our cities, our literature, and our race
are unknown except to a few learned savants, the Arab
baggara and the Indian pattamar will be still thrusting
their long snouts through the blue of the Indian Ocean,
as they have done for two thousand years
already.
Surely, then, the reeling Red Sea
baggara, foaming before a fair wind, becomes a thing of
living interest, to which any man may well doff his hat
in reverence for the things it has accomplished, and the
history it has yet to see.
The individuality of the sailing
vessel is one of its most remarkable attributes. It is
seen to a lesser ; the steamship, the locomotive, or
automobile, and in the stationary engine; but in none is
it so developed as in the sailing-boat, and of all the
works of man none has served him so long, or ever wins so
pre-eminently the confidence and love of its master and
creator.
See her upon the stocks, in a Malay
builder's shed, in Canton or on the Clyde -- how helpless
in her own creation, a mere mass of material, a thing to
all seeming inert and dead. Yet from the moment when she
rides at anchor in the tide she begins, even in the way
in which she snubs her chain, to show individual traits
of character which are peculiar to herself, and which go
on developing to the last day of her life. Storm and
sunshine, wind and calm, breaking sea and rolling swell,
go to make her, be she junk or barge, schuyt or lugger,
and to build up that confidence and intimate knowledge of
one another which lies between a skipper and his vessel,
and upon which may at any moment depend their very
existence. And so the boat goes on 'gaining continually
in grace, strength, audacity, and beauty, until at last
it has reached such a pitch of all these that there is
not, except the very loveliest creatures of the living
world, anything in nature so absolutely notable,
bewitching, and according to its means and measure
heart-occupying, as a well-handled ship on a stormy day.'
*1*
The keynote of sea-life is the
suddenness of its emergencies, the indescribable
swiftness of its catastrophes, and the intensity of its
calls upon the presence of mind and swift action of those
who follow it. It is with a view to emergency, in the
understanding of the certainty of Nature's passions, that
every capable sea-going boat is designed, built, rigged,
and sailed by every race. It is not the long summer
evening or the steady trade-wind that the sailing-boat is
built for. At sea, more than in any life of man, more
even than in time of warfare, it is the worst that must
be anticipated and prepared for. It is this certain
knowledge of impending struggle which makes the
sailor-man the alertest of mankind and the most patient;
and it is the fatalism bred of the constant sense of
danger which gives him the cheerfulness which shines most
brilliantly in emergency, and must ever be a source of
wonder and respect to those who are privileged to know
it. Not only by the moment of danger, but also by those
long hours of enduring struggle and watchfulness which
are nowhere longer drawn out than they are at sea, man
and boat are moulded.
*1* Ruskin in Turner's Harbours of
England
It is for such that the sailing-boat
is built; it is in darkness, when plunging into the
unknown sea valleys, heeling to the shrieking winds, that
the true and living nature of a boat is manifested. It is
then that man gains a new sense, exulting in the staunch
bravery, the true spirit of duty, the unerring pluck with
which the small fabric of man's making climbs the
threatening crests, and steps up to the heavy-fisted
squalls.
Truth, beauty, power, and obedience --
they are all there, all necessary. That worn little boat
with her coat of tar and her patched brown sails follows
laws as true and as majestic in every line of
softly-turning plank or bowing spar, as those by which
the great cathedral stands noble evidence of man's best
aspirations or the solid pier bars back the waters in
proud witness of his highest achievement.
It is probably true that the degree of
civilisation of any race is remarkably reflected in its
boat architecture. The variety of its adaptations to the
peculiar requirements of its waters is a measure of its
appreciation of the value of the cheapest and most
certain method of communication known to man, and it is
evidence of its ability to use materials at hand and fit
them to its needs. The highest degree of civilisation in
maritime races has always been marked by activity in
boat-building, and by variety of design and rig. In no
case has this been more notable than in the history of
China and of Holland, and in the Adriatic in the
fifteenth century, in Europe during the last two
centuries, and in the United States since
1780.
The Negro, the American Indian, and
the Slav, on the other hand, have never designed a
sea-going boat or cut a sail. It has not been for want of
waterways or of opportunity. It has been simply owing to
a lower class of intelligence, and to that want of
originality and enterprise which is the despair of the
Negro race, has been the death of the American Indian,
and will probably prevent the Slav from ever attaining to
that influence in the world's history which at one time
seemed likely to be his.
The navigation of the Northern and
Eastern coasts of Africa has been in the hands of the
Arabs from time immemorial. The dhow and the lateen-sail
which are seen south as far as Zanzibar, are Asiatic, and
not African. The defects which render it impossible that
the Negro will ever attain to any degree of true
civilization, and which doom him to remain for ever on a
lower scale than the most primitive race of Asia, have
also prevented his ever raising a noble building,
thinking an original thought, producing any work of art
-- or building or sailing a boat of his own. The measure
of his intelligence is the fact that he has never tamed
the elephant, the most docile of living beasts, which no
race of Asia, be it the lowest, has not tamed to its uses
long ago.
The Indian of America, although a fine
canoe man, second to none upon swift rivers, has died
without ever having hoisted a sail or got beyond the
canoe paddle.
The Slav has less the makings of a
sailor than either of the others, and though he may build
land empires, the island races will always defy him to
the end of time.
And for the reverse of the picture,
take the finest sailing coasters, the most powerful
fishing-craft and you will find that the inhabitants of
the coastline they navigate are preeminent in courage or
endurance, or in some branch of thought, or art, or
manufacture, by which they will leave their mark among
the races of the earth.
It is the sum of these things which
goes to make harbours in many ways the most interesting
places of the earth. Here the land and sea, the
shore-life and the shipping-life, meet and mingle. Here
may be read the character, the history, and the
potentialities of the race; here may be gauged the extent
of their enterprise and prosperity, in a way which can be
done nowhere so well, not even in the capitals
themselves. Who should discourse of the Harbours of the
World will have a subject worthy of his pen, not less
than of his brush. For he will deal with all history and
the lives of the nations; and he may paint scenes second
to none for beauty of form and colour. If here is no
place so full of ever-changing life and physical activity
as a great harbour, or more replete with interest and
suggestion to the mind. The coming and going of ships,
linking it with ends of the earth; the endless incident
and the changes and chances of wind, tide, and sky, all
go to make harbour life unique, and to explain the
fascination which it contains for every Englishman and
boy.
In the lives of most who have felt
that fascination, deeper than all else beside, has
generally sunk the recollection of some small fishing or
coasting craft come in for rest and shelter from out the
stormy horizon. The big-booted crew seemed to take on the
shapes of old Viking heroes, and the dripping little
vessel herself, with her clean lines and brave high bow,
is glorified in the memory by the mysterious air of power
and daring which seemed to cling to her as she staggered
in under reefed sails out of the wildness
beyond.
Ruskin, in a notable passage which is
too seldom read, has well nigh touched the soul of the
Boat Spirit :--
'One object there is still
which I never pass without renewed wonder of
childhood, and that is the bow of a boat. Not of a
racing wherry, a revenue cutter, or clipper yacht; but
the blunt head of a common, bluff, undecked sea-boat,
lying aside in its furrow of beach sand. The sum of
Navigation is in that. You may magnify it or decorate
as you will: you do not add to the wonder of it. I
lengthen it into hatchet-like edge of iron, strengthen
it with complex tracery of ribs of oak, carve it and
gild it till a column of light, moves beneath it on
the sea, you have made no more of it than it was at
first. That rude simplicity of bent plank, that can
breast its way through the death that is in the deep
sea, has in it the soul of shipping Beyond this we may
have more work, more men, more money; we cannot have
more miracle.
'For there is an infinite
strangeness in the perfect of the thing as work of
human hands. I know nothing else which man does, which
is perfect, but, that. All his other doings have some
sign of weakness, affectation, or ignorance in them.
They are over-finished or under-finished; they do not
answer their end, or they show a mean vanity answering
it too well. But the boat's bow is naively perfect;
complete without an effort. The man made it knew not
he was making anything beautiful as he bent its planks
into those mysterious, changing curves. It grows under
his hand into image of a sea-shell ; the seal, as it
were, of the flow of the great tides and streams of
ocean, stamped on delicate rounding. He leaves it,
when all is done without a boast. It is a simple work,
but it will keep out water. And every plank
thenceforth is a fate and has men's lives wreathed in
the knots of it, as the cloth-yard shaft had their
deaths in its plumes.
'Then also, it is wonderful on
account of the of the thin accomplished. No other work
human hands ever gained so much. Steam-engines and
telegraphs indeed help us to fetch and carry and talk;
they lift weights for us, and bring messages with less
trouble than would have been needed otherwise; this
saving of trouble, however, does not constitute a new
faculty, it only enhances the powers we already
possess. But in that bow of the boat is the gift of
another world. Without it, what prison wall would be
so strong as that "white and wailing fringe" of sea?
What maimed creatures were we all, chained to our
rocks, Andromeda like, or wandering by the endless
shores, wasting our incommunicable strength, and
pining in hopeless watch of inconquerable waves! The
nails that fasten together the planks of the boat's
bow are the rivets of the fellowship of the world.
Their iron does more than lead lightning out of
heaven, it leads love round the earth.
'Then also it is wonderful on
account of the greatness of the enemy that it does
battle with. To lift dead weight, to overcome length
of languid space, to multiply or systemise a given
force, this we may see done by the bar, or beam, or
wheel without wonder. But to war with that living fury
of waters, to bear its breast moment after moment
against the unweaned enmity of ocean, the subtle,
fitful, implacable smiting of the black waves,
provoking each other on, endlessly, all the infinite
march of the Atlantic rolling on behind them to their
help, and still to strike them back into a wreath of
smoke and futile foam, and win its way against them,
and keep its charge of life from them; does any other
soulless thing do as much as this ?'
*1* Turner's Harbours of
England.
The pleasure boat and the yacht form
no part of the subject of these pages. Modern yachting
has developed along special lines into a science in which
quite new factors than those usually prevailing in
shipbuilding have been gradually introduced. As was
natural, a considerable literature has grown up with it,
and the yachtsman will find no lack of capable books
dealing with those sea-queens of steel, lead, and
aluminium in which the modern yacht has
culminated.
Nor in these pages is it intended to
deal with modern square-rigged sailing, for this subject
is an engrossing one by itself and needs to be treated by
a square-rig sailor. Modern square-rigging may be said to
have come into existence with the development of the
topmast and topgallant mast, which was a result of the
adventurous and extensive voyages in the tiny vessels of
the time by Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Cabot, and others in
the early sixteenth century, which made an end of the
monopoly of the seas by the Venetian galleys. It
developed constantly through the period of the Dutch
naval supremacy, through the wars which won for England
the mastery of the seas against France and Spain, and
through the period of the American competition for the
carrying-trade which immediately preceded the
introduction of steam and of iron ship-building. In fact,
its development has scarcely yet ceased, inasmuch as
double topsails and topgallant sails, and steel yards and
masts, are an outcome of the later steel age, and are a
production essentially of the last quarter of the
nineteenth century. From the caravel of three hundred
tons to the four masted steel sailing-ship of six
thousand tons measurement is a long step, and its history
would be an instructive and thrilling record of the
enduring patience, the uncomplaining fearlessness, and
the resourceful ingenuity in the face of difficulty,
privation, and danger which have always characterised,
above all men, the deep-water sailor.
We tread a humble road and sail with
the lowly worker. We turn where the modest coaster and
the patient fisher-craft ply in the forgotten corners of
the seas; whose homes are behind the rough stone piers
and the lonely, wind-swept banks. Their hard-won wake we
follow, not in the ocean highways, but by rockbound cape
and snarling, far-stretched shoal; not in the bright
noonday, but in the bleak watches of the long night; not
in the summer breeze, but in the fury of hammering gale
and rearing sea. With them we hear the 'longshore
seagulls' wail and the sad curlews' whistle. In their
worn shrouds the cold land wind harps to us; the thunder
of the waiting breakers is about us. Their music, the
singing of the coastwise tides, is ours too. There is
death in that symphony, but it holds the great secrets in
its keeping.
