CHAPTER V
A “SHANGHAEING” EPISODE
THE next three years of my life at sea were but a repetition of the first three months of my experience, with a slight change in the scene of the incidents and a natural increase in my knowledge of seamanship. For when I returned to Boston in the Bombay from Liverpool, at the end of my first year of probation, and the opportunity was again presented to me of going into the navy as midshipman, I declined the offer of my own free will.
My views had changed during the past year, for I had learned how slow promotion was in the naval service, and I had seen in our squadron in Brazil gray-haired lieutenants who were vainly hoping for one more step before going on the retired list. In fact, Farragut, who entered the navy as a midshipman in 1810, had passed through the War of 1812, and after thirty-one years’ service was still a lieutenant in 1841.
During my year at sea my dear mother had died, my home was broken up, and when my cousin, who owned the Bombay, promised me that I should have the command of one of his ships when I was twenty-one, if I proved myself competent, I decided to stay where I was.
I received my first promotion to the position of second mate, when I was barely seventeen years of age, and a very proud youngster I was when I heard myself called “Mr.” Kelson, for the first time on the quarter-deck of the old Bombay, where less than four years before I had made my appearance as a green boy.
We were lying at this time at the levee in New Orleans, not far from Bienville Street, and abreast of the old French Market. The Bombay was the inner vessel of three in the tier, and formed a portion of the tow just made up by the tugboat Crescent City, and we were only waiting for our crew, soon to be brought on board by the boarding-house runners and the shipping-master.
There was a fine old custom that prevailed in New Orleans in those days of bringing the crew on board at night, at the last moment, comfortably drunk, counting them as received, and bundling them into their berths in the forecastle, to sleep off the fumes of their debauch. And by the next morning, when the ship would be down the river at the Belize, the tugboat was cast off, and then, and not until then, would the ship’s crew be needed to make sail and clear up the decks for sea.
It was the duty of the junior officer to receive and count the men as they came on board ship in every stage of intoxication. Some were brought over the gangway, absolutely helpless, by two stalwart runners; and when the ship’s quota had been duly delivered in the forecastle the shipping and boarding-house masters received a month’s advance pay for each man.
Whatever else might be said against this system, it certainly had the merit of simplicity; for as the voyage to Liverpool rarely exceeded thirty or thirty-five days, it was quite customary for the men to “jump the ship” in Liverpool as soon as she was docked, and, having little or no wages due them, they were cared for by another set of boarding-house sharks, who kept them during a very brief carouse in the “Sailor’s Paradise,” as Liverpool was then called, and then quietly bundled them on board of another ship, bagging their advance pay, after the fashion of their New Orleans brothers in iniquity.
All this, however, is but the prelude to my little story. That Christmas eve in 1845 I, as second mate, stood at the starboard gangway of the old Bombay, crammed to her upper deck beams with cotton, and with a deck load beside, and had checked off thirteen men drunk and semi-drunk, as they came on board in squads of two and three.
“Now then, Mr. Kelson,” said the chief mate, as he came up from the cabin, “have we got these men all aboard yet?”
“Only thirteen yet, Mr. Ackley,” I responded, looking at my list by the light of the lantern hanging in the main rigging. “But here comes the shipping-master, sir.”
“Where in thunder is that other man, Thompson?” said the mate. “The old man is as savage as a meat-axe down in the cabin, and you had better not see him till we have got our full complement on board.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Ackley,” replied the shipping-master. “Here’s Dago Joe, now, coming with his man. Well, Joe, you almost missed your chance. They are just ready to cast off the breast lines. What have you got in your handcart?”
“Oh, Mis’ Thompson, he reglar ole’ shellback, he is. He boad wid me six week. Came here bossun of de Susan Drew. You’ll ’member dis feller soon’s you see him. He say he won’t ship less’n sixteen dollar mont’. Dat’s de advance I giv’ him, ’cos I know Mis’ Ackley like good sailor man.”
“Why, he looks as though he were dead,” said I, peering at the prone body in the cart.
“Who, he? Oh no, sir; he been takin’ lil’ drop too much dis evenin’, but he be ol’ right ’fore mawnin’. Oh, he sober fust-class sailor man. ’Sure you of dat, Mis’ Ackley!”
At this moment our towboat gave an impatient whistle, and Captain Gay came up from the cabin, two steps at a time.
“Mr. Ackley, what are we waiting for? The tow has been made up for an hour, and we ought to have been a dozen miles down the river by this time!”
“The last man has just come on board, sir,” replied the mate, “and I shall cast off at once.”
“Be sharp about it then, sir!”
“Aye, aye, sir. Go forward, Mr. Kelson, and see to those head lines; take the cook, steward, and carpenter with you to haul them in. You, Joe, tumble that man of yours into the forecastle and get ashore yourself, or you’ll have a chance to take a trip down to the Southwest Pass! Let go the breast lines! Stand by forward!”
We cast off, the tugboat steamed ahead, the strong current struck us on the starboard bow, we slowly turned, and went on our way down the river, leaving the long line of twinkling lights of the Crescent City behind us.
The next morning at daylight the chief mate and I, after serious difficulties, succeeded in “rousing out” our befuddled crew, and then commenced clearing up decks and getting ready for making sail, for we were nearly abreast of Pilot Town, and would soon be over the bar.
Thirteen hard-looking subjects presented themselves from the forecastle, after some little time, but where was the fourteenth? A diligent search of the men’s quarters was at last rewarded by the discovery of the missing man—but such a man! A wretched-looking, frowsy-headed little creature, bandy-legged and narrow chested, a most unmistakable landsman, dressed in thin, blue cottonade trousers with a long-skirted, threadbare alpaca coat, buttoned over a calico shirt; with no waistcoat, or hat, and with well-worn lasting shoes on his feet. Trembling, blear-eyed, wild with evident astonishment at his surroundings, this unfortunate wretch was haled up before the mate by the carpenter, who had found him still asleep under one of the berths, hidden behind a large sea chest.
“Who the devil are you?” said Mr. Ackley roughly, looking contemptuously at the man, shivering in the chill of the early morning.
“Vere you vos takin’ me?” inconsequently replied the man, staring about him. “I want to go by my home. Lisbeth must ogspect me. Please stop the boat, lieber Herr; I must go home!”
“He’s got ’em bad, sir,” said the carpenter; “that New Orleans whiskey is mean stuff, sure. He’s got the ’trimmins, sir!”
“Who shipped you, you measly dog?” shouted the mate, paying no attention to the carpenter. “Come, speak up, or I’ll lather the hide off of you! Who shipped you I say?” raising a rope in a threatening manner.
“Please, goot gentleman, don’t strike me! I vant to go home. Lisbeth must ogspect me long ago. Why did you bring me here, goot gentleman?”
“I’ll ‘goot gentleman’ you! Here, Chips, take this fellow and put him under the head pump. Freshen him up a bit, and then I’ll warm him with a rope’s end and see if I can’t get some sense into him!”
The carpenter and one of the crew dragged the struggling man forward, and held him while one of the boys, delighted at the opportunity, pumped the cold river water over the poor creature, whose screams were drowned in the rough merriment of the sailors.
I look back at this scene now, as I record it, and at many others, even worse, that followed during the next month, and wonder if we were all—officers and men—brutes, in “those fine old days” of the Black Ball liners and the Liverpool trade!
Poor Shang—that was the name that fell to him in playful allusion to the fact that he had been made a victim to the “Shanghaeing” process, as it was called—had been drugged and brought on board helpless by Dago Joe to make up our full complement.
When we came to choose watches that evening Shang fell to me; he was left until the last, and Mr. Achley said, “Well, Mr. Kelson, you allowed Joe to bring this duffer on board, and its only fair that you should take him in your watch. I don’t want him!”
Shang, as I found out by questioning him, had gone out that Christmas Eve in New Orleans to buy a few little presents for their Christmas-tree. He was a poor journeyman tailor, a German who had come to this country from his native village of Pyrmont, several years ago, had married a fellow-countrywoman, Lisbeth, and they had one child,—a crippled girl, Greta,—whom the little man loved with his whole heart; and for her he had gone out to purchase something with his scanty, hard-earned wages, paid him that day.
He had stepped into a beer saloon for “ein glas bier,” as he said, had drunk it, felt drowsy, and—“Gott in Himmel, gnädiger Herr, nothing more know I more till I find myself in this strange ship! When think you, sir, we will get there—where we go—is it perhaps far?”
When I told poor Shang the real facts of the case, and that it would be months before he could again see his Lisbeth and Greta, the poor fellow was dumb with horror, and I almost feared he would make away with himself.
I did the best I could to make life endurable for the poor wretch. An old thick suit of mine he deftly made over for himself, and some of his shipmates helped him out with a few other clothes. But, even with the best intention, I could not make a sailor of poor Shang,—it was not in him, for he was a most helpless lubber,—and that was the misery of it.
He had been shipped and entered on our ship’s articles as an able seaman, and Joe had received sixteen dollars of monthly wages on his account. Our crew was short, at best, the winter voyage was a stormy one, and poor Shang could not be favored.
Mr. Ackley seemed to have taken an unconquerable dislike to the man from the first, and led him a dog’s life, beating him unmercifully several times for his shortcomings. Aloft he must go, though he clung helplessly to the ratlines in an agony of terror.
“You alone are goot to me, lieber Herr,” said the poor fellow. “I know you cannot help me more, but how can I live it? I know that I shall perish before we get there! Ach, lieber Gott, vot become of my lieblinge! Aber des Himmels Wege; sind des Himmels Wege!”
At last the long voyage was nearly at an end. Cape Clear was in sight one night as I came up to take the watch at midnight, and a very pleasant sight it was to all of us. There was a stiff all-sail breeze from the southward, and we were laying our course fairly up channel. I was looking over the quarter-rail at the light, now well abeam, as Shang came aft and drew near me.
“Is it then true, mein Herr, as they say, that we are almost there?”
“Yes, Shang, we are now almost there. If this breeze holds we will be in Liverpool day after to-morrow. And then,” I added, as I saw how anxiously he listened to me, “you can ship as a landsman, perhaps, and get back to Lisbeth and little Greta.”
“Gott sei dank,” he murmured, as he reverently lifted his hat, “if they have but live all this time.”
I endeavored to reassure the poor fellow, and then, as the breeze was freshening, I took in the topgallant sails, and later, finding the wind still increasing, called Captain Gay, who ordered all hands called and a single reef put in the topsails.
The watch below tumbled up, the yards were clewed down, reef-tackles hauled out, and both watches went aloft to the fore-topsail. As my station as second mate was at the weather earing, I was, of course, first aloft, and had just passed my earing and sung out, “Haul out to leeward,” when I noticed, to my great surprise, that the man next inside of me on the yard was Shang, who usually on such occasions was discreetly found in the bunt.
“Why, Shang,” said I, “you are really getting to be a sailor.”
“Ach, mein Herr,” said he cheerfully, “ich bin so glücklich und so frölich, now that I am really so near there and that I shall so soon see Lisbeth”—
A strong gust of wind struck us; there was a vicious slat of the sail that sent the heavy canvas over our heads; the ship made a desperate roll and a plunge into the rising sea, and then, as we all clung closely for our lives, the sail bellied out and filled again,—but the man next me was gone from the yard!
In the pitchy darkness of the moonless night he had fallen into the sea, and without a cry he was swept into eternity.
Poor Shang’s earthly troubles were forever ended!