"The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers
On every window-frame hang beaded damps
Like rows of small illumination lamps
To celebrate the jubilee of showers."
—Hood.
THE BALTIC SEA.
HERE, at this little wharf, the good sloop
Ann Dalrymple was moored to receive her ballast from the
neighboring chalk pit, and here for the first time I signed
articles. My wages were to be conditionally ten shillings a
month. If sick, I was to get as much as the captain valued my
services to be worth; so expecting nothing I could not well
expect to be disappointed. Against a light easterly wind we
tacked down the stream, which gave us a good chance of obtaining
a fine view of the Devonshire, at her moorings near Gravesend.
This was one of the last, if not the last, of this class of
huge, warlike merchantmen employed by the East India Company
during the period of their charter, which gave to them the rich
monopoly of all the products of the East for the United Kingdom.
They were certainly a noble looking craft, but slow. A voyage to
China and back was considered good if done in sixteen months.
The clipper of to-day will run it in four months. There is
nothing remarkable about Gravesend and Tilbury Fort, opposite,
except their weakness. The enormous amount of national wealth in
the Thames, even in the metropolis itself, for many years lay
singularly open to easy invasion. This anomaly existed down to a
very recent date, when there appeared in the reading world
Chesney's fiction entitled "The Battle of Dorking." This
pamphlet was graphically written, and the possibility of such a
disaster so clearly portrayed that it made a sensible impression
on the whole nation, and inspired the authorities with a lively
appreciation of danger. Hence the late improvements of the
points of defense. Three hundred guns of the largest caliber are
now defending those points.
We are now passing
the conflux of the Medway with the Thames, where lay in ordinary
the surplus naval power of the nation; and where, about the end
of the last century, the great mutiny transpired. Wherever a
strict discipline is necessary petty annoyance on the part of
subordinate officials is sure to become one of its concomitants,
particularly when power is purchasable with money. Many a "round
robin" grievance had been, from time to time, placed before the
Lords of the Admiralty in vain. At length patience gave way, and
the fleet rebelled. The mutiny was orderly and systematically
conducted. The mutineers appointed their officers and slackened
in nothing involving true discipline. High in the esteem of the
mutineers stood Mr. Parker, an excellent sailor, of good parts,
and possessed of decided executive ability. In loud acclamation,
he was, unfortunately for himself, appointed admiral. A
formidable list of grievances was laid before the
Admiralty Board. Awaiting a reply thereto, behold a signal from
the Nore Light to Chatham that the victorious fleet, under
command of Lord Duncan, had hove in sight, bearing the glad
tidings that success had crowned his mission. He had destroyed
the threatening Dutch navy off Camperdown, and in glory returned
to his native land just in time to accomplish, as a peacemaker,
a much more important victory than that which had intoxicated
England with ecstatic joy. Sensible of the gravity of the
condition into which this all-important arm had been
precipitated, willing to remove tangible existing abuses, yet
highly disapproving the means employed to redress those
disabilities, he became a sort of arbitrator between the
government and the mutineers. This uprising has not been
fruitless, but, as usual, the law will claim its victim, and
poor Parker had to die an ignominious death at the yard-arm of
the ship of which, for a brief season, he held supreme control.
Passing the Nore Light, and through the Swin
into the North Sea, I soon found my old enemy was not to be
baffled, and that my prospective maximum wage began to recede
from my mental vision; but the captain, unlike Patterson, was
kind, so that my helpless condition was thereby greatly
ameliorated. He even commiserated my condition, and marveled
that I could live on what I ate. We are in the Cattegat,
approaching the bold headland whereon the ghost of Hamlet's
father made the night hideous in his transient re-visit to his
native Denmark in his interview with his old friend Horatio and
his bewildered son. Here we, in common with all vessels entering
the Baltic Sea, paid toll to the Dane, an impost no longer
existing. Thanks to the American marine for its abolition. We
pass the beautiful city of Copenhagen, with its fine spires and
innumerable windmills. It appears that every action in life in
Denmark is driven by the wind. Now, in the tide-less Baltic, we
experience the first blow, and lose our dog overboard, a fine
Newfoundland fellow, much liked by the captain and all the crew.
We arrive at the mouth of the Dwina, and
under the protection of the Czar of All the Russias. A
customhouse boat manned by eleven men, the chief and ten rowers,
who, with the exception of two, who were left in charge of the
boat, boarded the sloop satis cere-motiie. These
unwelcome visitors put the captain and those of the crew who had
been here before on the alert to guard against the notorious
thieving propensities of the Russian serf. Our captain invited
the officer to dinner, and while the splendid piece of English
beef was cooking, the boat's crew, obtaining access to the hold,
lessened the expense of discharging our ballast by stealing the
chalk it contained. The bell announced the hour for dinner, when
the captain, mate, and the officer, with keen appetites, sat
down to partake of the hospitalities of the Ann Dalrymple,
myself to wait on them. Pea soup was the first course, but in
ladling out the soup the cook discovered that the beef had
disappeared, and in the spirit of disappointment came aft to
announce the sad disaster. It is supposed the meat was extracted
from the boiling cauldron while the cook had turned around to
feed his fire or other cause, and had then been dropped
overboard into the thieves' own boat, to be hidden among the
stolen chalk.
Some eight or ten miles up stream, after
discharging the remainder of our ballast, we find ourselves
safely moored, stern on, to the floating bridge in the harbor of
the city of Riga.
Our voyage here being entirely speculative,
and trade being dull, had the effect of prolonging our sojourn
to an unprofitable extent, and, indeed, threatened to lock us up
during the long, dreary months of a Russian winter. One more
day's frost would have sufficed to settle that point. Happily,
the captain was anxious to get home; and his half cargo of seed
wheat and flax, being consigned to the port of Leith, which is
only a few miles from his native place, where his wife and
family lived, rather than run the risk of being detained all
winter he tore himself away through a crust of ice three inches
thick. This movement proved the more desirable from the fact
that the Russian marine law forbids the use of fire on board
ship while in harbor. All cooking must therefore be done on
shore in rude sheds provided for the purpose. In these sheds
there is a raised stone platform, whereon the fires of each ship
are built and used. This establishment is presided over by an
old soldier, evidently chosen for his cross-grained cruelty, and
armed with a fearful weapon, composed of some half-dozen leather
thongs, tipped with fire-hardening, and fastened to the end of a
two-foot long stick, and woe betide the urchin who drifts under
the real or fancied displeasure of this specimen of humanity,
especially if his vessel hails from Britain,—that dear little
spot, which appears to be at once hated and feared by the
nations of the earth in proportion to their ignorance of her
good qualities. When gloating over his favorite amusement he was
wont, in broken English, to give utterance by way of emphasizing
his lashes, the following argumentative jargon: "Russman dobra,
Prussman dobra, Daneman dobra, Frenchman dobra, Swedeman dobra,
Spainman dobra," and the list had to correspond with the length
of the chastisement, and could only be limited by
the inflictor's average knowledge of geography.
Our passage to Scotland would have been
monotonous but for the fact that the crew of a wrecked schooner
took passage at Elsinore with us, and the captain of said crew,
being fond of the bottle, and laying in a good supply of strong
Holland gin for the voyage, and it never having been known that
our good captain was in the habit of casting the delectable
stuff over his left shoulder, had the effect of converting the
virtuous cabin of the Ann Dalrymple into a Bacchanalian
disgrace. Nor was the effect confined to the cabin.
Drunkenness produces a great variety of
idiosyn-cracies of character on the part of its victims. Its
pranks are manifested on no two alike. In this case the feeling
of generosity was the attribute played upon. All had to taste,
from mate to cabin-boy, and soon the forecastle out-heroded the
cabin in thoughtless jollity, and by the time we reached the
British coast there was not a man on board who was able to
distinguish the revolving light on the promontory of Flamborough
Head from that of the island of May, a hundred miles apart!
(Need we marvel at the number of shipwrecks?) For five dark
nights I was kept in the crosstrees looking out, and when the
May was descried it was taken for the more southern light, and
we veered to the north accordingly. Nor were the dreamy eyes of
the sapients undeceived until the rays of the morning light
disclosed the fact of our near approach to Peterhead. Then,
under the sense of shame and self-reproach, bustle and activity
suddenly became the order of the day. To regain our lost way the
better part of the east coast of Scotland had to be navigated
against a light contrary wind, which cost us nearly two days. At
length, after a pleasant sail up that beautiful estuary, the
Firth of Forth, we arrived at our destination; and now the wage
problem had to be solved. Inauspicious hour! The baneful effects
of the late prolonged debauch, aggravated by an enforced
sobriety, was revealing a sad change on the countenance of the
usually kind-hearted captain. His wonted suavity had all
departed and given place to a moroseness fearful to look upon.
The hands were paid off, and I was called to settle up. I
listened to a long list of all my shortcomings, some of which I
was vain enough to deem exaggerated. He then requested me to
sign a full discharge of all my claims against the Ann Dalrymple,
and paid me two shillings and sixpence. The offhanded manner in
which the captain had disposed of my claim on the Ann Dalrymple
by the payment of half-a-crown I thought was open to
reconsideration. It is true the contract was rather loosely
drawn, and my expectations anything but extravagant, but an
impartial retrospect of the voyage led me to believe that
Captain Hutton's drunken "ipse dixit,'' if honest, was anything
but liberal. I therefore sought an interview with that
gentleman, but he had crossed the Firth to his family, and I was
left to make the most of my wealth. The weak has to take the
wall. I suppose I tried to philosophize, and on my way east
broke my half-crown in the purchase of a penny bap, which,
moistened with clear water, made a very wholesome dinner for a
dyspeptic, leaving a remnant of hunger to do the office of
digesting another such meal, if such should fall in my way. As
it fell out, I had at Tranent to diminish the proceeds of my
Baltic trip to satisfy the cravings of troublesome hunger till I
reached my dreaded home.
