Titanic and Other Ships By Charles Lightoller
Chapter 18 DERELICTS
As it turned out, this was to be my last voyage in sail, and will always stand out as being the very worst. The passage out consisted of a series of gales topped off with a fire. Whilst on the homeward voyage we never had the skysails in once, except as a matter of form off the Horn; 165 days from Iquiqui to the Lizard (Cornwall). Six weeks in the Doldrums where it rained so incessantly that we had the oil completely washed off our oilskins. Five times we crossed the line, to-day a mile or two north, to-morrow, we had drifted south again; next day further south, then north again and so on, till we were like jellyfish. Bad weather may be bad, but too much so-called good weather, is I think, worse. Particularly when it means, as in the Doldrums, hauling and pulley hauling the yards round day after day, and night after night, till, as in our case, the crew got absolutely exhausted. However, all good things must have an end, as ours did with a flicker of wind from the N.E. Round came the yards once again and, for the hundredth time, the hope that it might be the true N.E. Trades, and, this time, it was. Why I say true Trades is because one often picks up the false N.E. Trades even south of the Line, and again you'd get the Portuguese trades sometimes 35° and even 40° north of the Line, which may develop into the true Trades of the Tropics and good old flying fish weather. As a matter of fact, they remained only too true, and in consequence, worked us away to the westward, so that we were well over to the Gulf of Mexico.
On this voyage I caught what I firmly believe to be the first specimen ever known of a fish with hands and feet. The head winds had forced us over towards the Gulf until we were well within the region of the well-known "Gulf Weed" almost identical in appearance with mistletoe. This weed flows out of the Sargasso Sea, and originated the old tale of ships which become embedded in acres and acres of this weed, to turn slowly round and be steadily, but sure, drawn to the centre of the much feared sea, until at last, with provisions and water all gone, they become derelicts, continuing their everlasting circling through the ages. One almost regrets that the steamer has torn that theory all to pieces, as they crossed and recrossed the dreaded Sargasso Sea with ever sighting any legendary and seaweedy island.
In point of fact derelict ships never remain stationary either in the Sargasso or any other sea. There is a continual flow, mainly due to the currents set up by the revolution of the earth, and the retarding action of the water. The earth, moving round to the eastwards, tends to leave the water behind it, and promptly sets up what is called the Equatorial Current, which has its origin around the Line on the Coast of Africa. This flows to the westward, increasing in momentum till it strikes the north coast of South America, and flows north into the Caribbean or Sargasso Sea, through the Gulf of Mexico, circling round and flowing out through the Staits of Florida; thus forming the Florida and Counter-Equatorial Current, and flowing back again to the westward, and bringing into existence the great Gulf Stream, which strikes the coast of England, and to which we owe our much maligned climate. A split in the Gulf Stream takes place off the Coast of Ireland, one part going south, forming the Reynolds Current--one of the most erratic in the world. The other branch goes north, making the Arctic Current and coming to the Coast of Newfoundland in the guise of the Labrador Current, bringing with it thousands upon thousands of icebergs. In fact, one theory regarding the formation of the great Banks of Newfoundland, is that they have been caused by the deposit from icebergs, which were originally glaciers, and brought with them, through the countless ages millions of tons of earth. The icebergs, on striking the warm water, are alleged to meld, and deposit their material at the bottom of the sea. Whatever the truth, the Banks are certainly very much in evidence, and form a happy hunting ground for cod, fog and icebergs.
The smaller currents are unfortunately the most erratic, and don't help matters when trying to make a decent landfall. About the worst culprit is the Reynolds Current, which flows across the mouth of the English Channel. A heavy south-westerly gale in the Bay of Biscay will set this chap running like a mill race in the wrong direction. One of our crack Atlantic Liners (I won't mention names) coming home from New York; instead of being well south of the Scillies, found herself north of these islands, an sighted the Seven Stones Lightship. This, despite the fact that the Captain was one of the most able and careful navigators on the North Atlantic. A glance at the map will show what a narrow shave she had.
Apart from icebergs, another inducement for the sailor to keep his eyes skinned is derelicts, that have been known to drift about the world for years, covering thousands of miles. Individually, they are a worse danger than icebergs. Often they are nothing but waterlogged and dismasted old Nova Scotia schooners loaded with timber, just floating awash, and utterly impossible to sink, but able to rip the bottom out of any unwary liner. It is by no means uncommon for the hull of a dismasted ship to float, for weeks and even months, with the remains of her crew, unmanageable, and unnavigable, with limited provisions and no means of communication. If she has been dismasted anywhere near the Line, she is fairly sure to find her way into the Great Caribbean Sea, or the Gulf of Mexico, where she may circle and circle indefinitely. On the other hand she may, with luck, come out on the Florida Current, but long ere this happens, only a few pitiful skeletons remain to tell the story.
But to get back to my walking fish.
I had succeeded in collecting a good many specimens from the floating Gulf Weed when one of the watch below, lying around on the hot decks, pointed out a fish that I had missed lying hidden under the fluke of the starboard anchor. I picked it up and popped it in my aquarium, which consisted of an old five gallon kerosene tin. After a time, the peculiar action of the fish, caught my eye. It sort of sidled up alongside a piece of weed, and remained stationary, with out moving its fins. My curiosity was aroused, so I got the cap off the end of a telescope and filled it with water, and examined the little beggar closely with a magnifying glass. Sure enough, it had tiny, but fully developed hands and feet. Actually, the fish was slightly flat, and swam on its edge. The arms out of each side consisted of a transparent fin-like substance. This formed the lower part of an arm and ended in a perfect little hand with five fingers. Little flat legs of a similar nature, but just from the knees down--folded up underneath the body, when it went to the bottom of the tin the legs came down and it stood on its feet, or it would rise alongside a branch of weed, and deliberately grip hold of it with its hands and hang on.
It dawned on me that this must be a very rare specimen, and I set out to try and find some methylated spirit or anything else in which to pickle it.
None to be got. "Try whisky," said one humorist, and I even had the temerity to suggest to the Captain that he should give me some whisky, as there was no methylated spirits, but I, with the fish, was consigned to places even hotter than the Gulf of Mexico. "Fish with hands and feet," snorted the autocrat of the sea. "Get out of this, or I'll pickle you." I fled back to my precious fish, to find that some crabs had solved the difficulty by eating it!
For many years I stood the jeers of all and sundry that listened to this fish yarn, but I got my own back when, in the usual scare headlines of a New York paper, they informed the world, that the "First known specimen of a fish with hands and feet had been discovered and brought home by the Captain of a steamer." As far as I know the "only specimen" is still swimming round quite happily in the New York aquarium.
Within a hundred miles of the spot where I got my fish I also saw what is believed to be the biggest shark in the world.
I had the forenoon trick at the wheel. She was steering easy "By the wind," just moving through the water.
I momentarily dropped my eyes from watching the weather leech of the mizzen royal, and glanced over the rail to leeward, and saw, what at first I took to be a blackfish. Still I knew it couldn't be that from the fin and the colour, and then it dawned on me it was a shark. But, my godfathers, what a shark! I let out a yell, "Shark on the lee beam."
The Captain was on the weather side of the poop at the time, and ran over to leeward and saw it.
There was certainly no shark hook or line in the whole wide world that would hold this chap, so the Captain dashed into the chart room for a rifle, and snatching one out of the rack, slipped in a cartridge, came out on deck and fired. I doubt if the bullet took any effect, but before he could reload, Tiger Jim had disappeared.
I believe to this day that it was Tiger Jim, a well-known shark that had been sighted by sailing ships again and again in those waters, and he never leaves them. He is nearly as well known as Pelorus Jack, the porpoise (and the only fish individually protected by Government!) that used to pilot ships through the Cook Straits.
Reports as to Tiger Jim's size vary. Some went up as far as thirty-six feet but as luck would have it we got a first class opportunity of measuring him. When I saw him, and recovered from the shock, his tail was just abreast of the wheel. When the Captain ran across the forward end of the poop Tiger Jim's nose was just level with the forward 'thwartship rail. In this manner we arrived at a very accurate estimate, and it came out at exactly thirty-one feet, and he could have taken a full grown calf at a mouthful!
On our long passage home--165 days from land to land--I came to seriously consider the advantages and disadvantages of "sail."
If one ever could tear away from the never ending glamour and romance, the ever close and intimate association with those utterly absorbing, revelations of the deep sea, then common sense said "steam." But the soul of any square rigged sailor in the 'nineties revolted at the prosaic monotony one coupled with a steamboat. Still, anyone with an inch of foresight, knew well that sail was on the wane. Steam had come and come to stay.
One might as well make up one's mind to stow away the hard-learned lore of sailing ship days and let it become just a treasured memory, and turn to the machinery of modern times.
It was a bitter pill, but I swallowed it with the best grace I could find and became a "steamboat sailor," so that frequent term of ineffable contempt, would now apply to me! However, I stuck to my guns and said good-bye to the good old windjammers that I loved.
[ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 ]
