CHAPTER IV
NOT BORN TO BE DROWNED
THE next voyage of the Bombay was to Mobile for a cargo of cotton, to be carried to Liverpool. It was the custom in those days for ships of any great size to discharge and take in their cargoes in the lower bay. The city is on the Mobile River, fully twenty-five miles above the entrance to the lagoon-like bay, cut off from the Gulf of Mexico by a narrow isthmus, upon the point of which the lighthouse stands.
The Bombay came to Mobile in ballast, so there was no cargo to discharge, very much to our satisfaction, as everything had to be loaded into large lighters, which made hard work for the crew.
Captain Gay, as was the custom, went up to the city as soon as the ship was safely anchored, to superintend the work of the brokers in obtaining freight, and to forward the cotton to the ship with all possible expedition. The chief mate remained on board in charge of the ship.
Of all the dismal holes I had ever seen, the lower bay of Mobile was the worst. The low shores are either alluvial mud or clear sand; there were no trees, no inhabitants but a very few ignorant fishermen, and absolutely nothing to relieve the monotony of life on shipboard, divested even of the excitement that is found when at sea in the changes of wind and weather, and the making and taking in sail that follows calm or storm.
We were supposed to be in port, and Jack dearly loves his “Sunday liberty,” with its attendant run ashore; but here no one cared to go on shore on Sundays or any other day, merely to wander about in the sand, half devoured by mosquitoes, and without a living soul to exchange a word with. Then, to make it even more disagreeable, as the bay is unprotected, and it was in the winter season, we were compelled to stand anchor watches at night, and keep our sails bent in readiness to slip our anchors and work off shore if a norther should strike us.
I have since lain at anchor off some very inhospitable and uninteresting shores, but I do not remember anything more detestable than life in Mobile Bay in 1844, unless, indeed, it was my blockading experience outside of that same bay in 1862, of which you will hear before you finish this volume.
Our only relaxation was crabbing. For this sport we took old iron hoops and wove upon them coarse nets of heavy twine, the meshes being very open. In these nets we fastened three or four pounds of the most ancient and malodorous salt beef we could find in the harness casks,—and these pieces could be scented the length of the ship. At night, the nets, heavily weighted, were thrown overboard with a stout line attached to them, and allowed to sink to the bottom.
The next morning we hauled the nets in, and rarely failed to find from one to half a dozen enormous hard-shelled crabs entangled in the meshes of each net and viciously fighting with each other. The result of these contests was frequently seen in an unfortunate crab minus half of his legs.
But the pleasure of crab-fishing soon palled upon us, and not even a hardened sailor’s stomach could endure a steady diet of these crustaceans. So, after the first week the crab nets were neglected, and we were forced into spending our few hours of leisure in sleep, an unfailing resource for a sailor.
However, the first lighter laden with cotton soon came down from Mobile, and with it a gang of stevedores who were to stow this precious cargo. At that time freights to Liverpool were quoted at “three half-pence a pound,” which represented the very considerable sum of fifteen dollars a bale. So it was very much to the interest of our owners to get every pound or bale squeezed into the ship that was possible.
The cotton had already been subjected to a very great compression at the steam cotton presses in Mobile, which reduced the size of the bales as they had come from the plantations fully one half. It was now to be forced into the ship, in the process of stowing by the stevedores, with very powerful jackscrews, each operated by a gang of four men, one of them the “shantier,” as he was called, from the French word chanteur, a vocalist. This man’s sole duty was to lead in the rude songs, largely improvised, to the music of which his companions screwed the bales into their places. The pressure exerted in this process was often sufficient to lift the planking of the deck, and the beams of ships were at times actually sprung.
A really good shantier received larger pay than the other men in the gang, although his work was much less laborious. Their songs, which always had a lively refrain or chorus, were largely what are now called topical, and often not particularly chaste. Little incidents occurring on board ship that attracted the shantier’s attention were very apt to be woven into his song, and sometimes these were of a character to cause much annoyance to the officers, whose little idiosyncrasies were thus made public.
One of their songs, I remember, ran something like this:—
“Oh, the captain’s gone ashore,
For to see the stevedore.
CHORUS: Hie bonnie laddie, and we’ll all go ashore.
“But the mate went ashore,
And got his breeches tore,
Hie bonnie laddie,” etc.
As Mr. Bowker had returned to the ship the day before, after a visit to the lighthouse, with his best broadcloth trousers in a very dilapidated condition, this personal allusion to the unfortunate incident, shouted out at the top of their hoarse voices by “Number One” gang was, to say the least, painful. We boys, however, thought the sentiment and the verse equally delightful.
The second lighter of cotton was towed down to us by quite a large high-pressure steamer, the Olive Branch, that was going on to Pass Christian with passengers. After dinner that day, Mr. Bowker, who was in an unusually amiable mood, called out, “You, Bob, take Charlie with you in the dingey, and go on board that steamer, and see if you can’t get me some newspapers.”
Charlie was the new boy, the successor to Jim, who had unostentatiously departed from the ship, “between two days,” in Liverpool, last voyage. As Charlie was my junior, I took a great and not unnatural pleasure in making him as uncomfortable as possible when an opportunity presented. So I hauled the dingey up at once to the gangway, and, rousing Charlie up from his unfinished dinner, started off for the steamer.
I had already become quite a good boatman, but this was a novel experience for me, and indeed it was quite a delicate matter to lay a small boat safely alongside one of those great side wheel steamers while she was still in motion,—for the Olive Branch had not anchored, but had only stopped her engines and was slowly drifting.
As I approached the steamer I saw a man standing well forward of the wheel-house with a line ready to throw to us, and I headed the boat for him. As we came within good distance we tossed in our oars, the line was thrown, Charlie caught it, but stumbled and fell, and in a moment the dingey had capsized, and we were in the water and under the wheel of the steamer!
Unfortunately I had never learned to swim; and as I was heavily clad I went down in the cold salt water of the bay like a stone, and for a few seconds experienced all the agonies of drowning!
Then I rose and, as I came to the surface, found myself among the “buckets” of the great wheel of the steamer, which were green and slimy with river moss, and as slippery as ice. By a tremendous physical effort I succeeded in getting astride of one of these buckets, and obtained a precarious position of comparative safety, as I thought at first.
But, to my horror, I was scarcely out of the water when the wheel commenced very slowly revolving. The terror of that moment I shall never forget. The recollection of it returns to me now, after all these years, and in my bad attacks of nightmare I sometimes fancy myself clinging again with desperation to a slowly revolving wheel, drenched, shivering with cold, and expecting each moment a horrible death!
In my agony I shouted aloud; but, inclosed on all sides as I was by the wheel-box, I felt sure that my cries could not be heard. In the darkness of this prison box the wheel slowly, very slowly revolved, carrying me up toward the top of the cover, where I fully expected to be ground to pieces; or if perchance I escaped that fate, I knew that I would be drowned when I was drawn under the water in the fearful suction beneath the wheel.
Escape seemed impossible, but frantic with fear I again shouted at the top of my shrill young voice till my lungs seemed ready to burst. Then the wheel stopped. There was a pause; I heard the noise of hurried feet upon the wheel-box above me, a trap door was opened, and the blessed light of day came struggling in.
I saw a man looking earnestly down into the darkness of the space beneath him, and I tried to call out, but my voice seemed paralyzed, and, for the moment, I could not make a sound.
Neither seeing nor hearing anything, the man rose from his knees and was about to close the trap-door, when I made another effort, and, thank God, a faint cry burst from my parched throat.
The man paused, then sprang upon the wheel, picked me up in his arms, and I fainted dead away!
After what seemed a long time, although, as I was told, it was but a few minutes, I recovered consciousness to find myself stretched out on a mattress, covered with a blanket, and surrounded by a number of kind-hearted women. The passengers had seen the boat upset and noticed my sudden disappearance. Charlie, who could swim like a fish, was picked up, and declared that I was drowned. Indeed, he “saw me go down and never come up again.”
By the merest chance the captain had not started the steamer ahead. If that had been done I should, of course, have been killed.
My clothes were soon dried in the engine-room, the dingey and her oars had been recovered, a generous bag of fruit and cake was packed for me by the sympathetic ladies, and we returned to the Bombay.
As I came up over the side, Mr. Bowker greeted me with, “Where have you been all this time, Bob?”
I explained to him my narrow escape from a dreadful death, to which he cheerfully responded:—
“Well, Bob, you certainly were not born to be drowned; look sharp to it, lad, that you do live to be hanged!”