After
I graduated from the training ship my first voyage at sea
was on the sailing ship Firth of Forth, a bark of 930 tons;
and I was 17 years old at the time. We sailed from Glasgow
(September 1891) and were bound for Port Adelaide, Australia,
with a general cargo of clay pipes, corn starch, whiskey in
bottles, beer, and some other things."
We made no stops in between (no intermediate stops for cargo)
and the run to Australia took 110 days. On the return we sailed
to Rotterdam and the whole trip took fifteen months.
There were about 24 men in
the crew: the Captain, the First Mate, the Second Mate, one
Cook, one Sail Maker, one Carpenter, and the rest were sailors,
including four apprentices. In those days a sailor's wages
were about 22 shillings a month. The Captain was a man named
William Higgins; fairly tall and wiry. He was a young fellow;
somewhere between 25 and 30 years of age.
We sailed around the Cape of
Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to Australia. When we
were rounding the Cape of Good Hope a man slipped off a spar
while above deck and he fell into the ocean, but we were able
to rescue him. He did have a black eye, however, as an albatross
dove down on him when he was in the water and his wing tip
hit him. This same albatross bit a piece out of his leg. These
albatrosses were web-footed birds and if they happened to
land on deck they couldn't get off. We found them off the
Cape of Good Hope; and we caught them with a hook on a line
off the stem of the ship.
We saw a water spout one time
but the closest it got to us was about half a mile away. We
did not try to run from it.
Speaking of sharks. We would
take a hook and put it on the end of a rope baited with a
bit piece of pork. The shark would then turn over on his back
and go for this. We would take him on deck with a block and
tackle, watching out for his tail that could knock a man down
if he was hit with it. Then we would put a marlinespike (used
for raising the anchor) in the shark's mouth to keep it from
snapping; and then the shark would be like this for twenty-four
hours. Once a kitten walked up to the shark's mouth ad the
jaws snapped and killed it.
Our cargo was a temptation
to the crew. Men on the night watch would break into the cargo
and help themselves. During the day the hatch was open to
let in the air. At night the Mate went around to lock up the
hatch. On the night watch, and after about 2:00 a.m. some
of the men would go below with canvas bags and fill them up
with bottles of beer and carry them with a big lump of coal
and later drop the bags over the ship's side so they wouldn't
get caught.
You didn't have much time to
sleep on ship. A typical day would be like this. 8:00 a.m.
to 12:00 noon you went on watch; then from 12:00 noon to 4:00
p.m. you were off. On again from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00p.m.(this
was the dogwatch: just two hours). You were off from 6:00
p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (another dogwatch). You were on 8:00 p.m.
to 12:00 midnight, and off from midnight to 4:00 a.m. So you
only got four hours sleep at a time.
From Port Adelaide we went
to Newcastle in New South Wales where we took on a load of
coal which we eventually unloaded at Rio de Janeiro. After
leaving Australia we crossed the Pacific and then put in at
Taltal, a small port in the northern part of Chile that was
mainly used for the loading of nitrate, a principal fertilizer
in those days. While we were t here an earthquake struck the
country. The ship was anchored out in the harbor and I was
on it at the time. It was a queer feeling when the quake struck,
as you could feel the ship shake -just as though it were quivering.
After we left Taltal we had
to round Cape Horn where we ran into floating ice which almost
killed us all. At one time the ship had a very close call
as two icebergs were very close and bearing down on us. They
were big things: about 60 feet high and from 60 to 70 feet
long. The Captain ordered everybody on deck so they would
be able to move quickly if the bergs hit us. Fortunately they
cleared us -just by about sixty feet - and then crashed into
each other. It was bitter cold when the ice bergs were around.
It is very stormy down in that
part of the world. It took us 56 days alone after we left
Taital to get around Cape Horn. We would go so far and then
be driven back. The winds were so strong that we would lose
in one day all the mileage it had taken us a whole week to
make.
During the trip around the
Horn I had to go up the mast one time during a big storm.
It was terrible. When you got up to the yard you stood on
a rope, stretched several feet below it and then hung on the
yard-arm with one hand while you fixed the sail with the other.
On a really bad night you waited for a flash of lightning
so you could better see what you were doing. We had a saying
about handling the sails- 'One hand for the Captain and one
hand for yourself.'
We had 2-hour turns at the
wheel down there and when I took my turn I was lashed to the
wheel.
While we were sailing from
Taltal and around the Horn we ran short of water. We had a
lookout stationed up on the mast watching for clouds. When
any were sighted we would sail towards them and try to get
underneath to catch rain if it should fall. We spread a couple
of tarpaulins on deck to catch the rain and run off the water
into jars. We had just finished oiling the ship on the way
home and the water was filled with oil, but we found we could
drink it. Sometimes it would rain one end of the ship and
not on the other. The Mate would dole out water from a barrel.
Normally the allotment would be three quarts a day. The water
shortage had come about because the Captain had wanted to
save money. When we were able to get it we had to pay for
each keg of water we got.
We spend so much time getting
around Cape Horn that the voyage from Taltal in Chile to Rio
de Janeiro (where we discharged coal) and then on to Rotterdam
took 128 days. After getting past Cape Horn we thought we
would have an easy time getting home. However, off the Dutch
West Indies we were hit by a hurricane and all our sails blew
out. Fortunately we did not lose our masts; and we did have
an extra set of sails.
While we are talking of sails,
1 want to say something about the rigging of a ship. Ours
was a bark and the first of the three masts was square-rigged;
and the lowest sail on this mast was the foresail. The next
sail on it was the topsail; the third was also a topsail;
the fourth was the topgallant and the fifth was the Royal.
The second mast was also square-rigged, the same as the first.
The third and rear mast was rigged for-and-aft; that is, the
sails were shaped like triangles and were upright. The lowest
sail on the third mast was the spinnaker. Forward of the first
mast were small upright jib sails fastened to the bowsprit.
Russell & Co's "Cambus Wallace" a steel hulled
barque
similar to those Dugald Roberts sailed on.
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