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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #56311 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56311)
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of the Ocean, by Ernest Ingersoll
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Book of the Ocean
-
-Author: Ernest Ingersoll
-
-Release Date: January 5, 2018 [EBook #56311]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF THE OCEAN ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow, Brian Wilcox and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes:
-
-Italic text is denoted _thus_.
-
-The original spelling, hyphenation, accentuation and punctuation has
-been retained, except for apparent typographical errors.
-
-In Chapter 10, the quotation following the 10th paragaph stated:
-
-  On her port side she carries a red light, and it is so shut in that
-  it cannot be seen from the port side or from behind.
-
-This has been corrected to read:
-
-  On her port side she carries a red light, and it is so shut in that
-  it cannot be seen from the starboard side or from behind.
-
-
-
-
-  THE
-  BOOK OF THE OCEAN
-
-
-
-
-+Other books in similar style and binding.+
-
-
-  THE CENTURY
-  WORLD’S FAIR BOOK
-  FOR BOYS & GIRLS.
-
-  BY TUDOR JENKS.
-
-The standard young folks’ book of the Fair. The story of two boys
-who visited the great exhibition with their tutor. 250 pages, richly
-illustrated, from photographs, etc. $1.50.
-
-
-BY ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS.
-
-_Issued under the auspices of the Sons and Daughters of the American
-Revolution. Each with about 250 pages and as many illustrations, in
-handsome binding. $1.50._
-
-
-  THE CENTURY BOOK
-  FOR YOUNG AMERICANS.
-
-Telling in attractive story form what every boy and girl ought to know
-about the government,—the President, Senate, etc. Introduction by
-General Horace Porter.
-
-
-  THE CENTURY BOOK OF
-  THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
-
-The story of the pilgrimage of a party of young folks to the famous
-Revolutionary battle-fields from Lexington to Yorktown. Introduction by
-the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew.
-
-
-  THE CENTURY BOOK
-  OF FAMOUS AMERICANS.
-
-Describing a trip to the historic homes of America—Washington’s,
-Lincoln’s, Grant’s, etc. With an introduction by the President-General
-of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
-
-  +The Century Co.+
-
-[Illustration: Original Image.]
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY LOUIS LOEB.      ENGRAVED BY M. HAIDER.
-
-THE MAJESTY OF THE SEA.]
-
-
-
-
-  THE
-  BOOK OF THE OCEAN
-
-  BY
-
-  ERNEST INGERSOLL
-
-  AUTHOR OF  “KNOCKING ROUND THE ROCKIES,”
-  “THE OYSTER INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES,”
-  “FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING,”
-  “WILD NEIGHBORS,”
-  “THE CREST OF THE CONTINENT,” ETC.
-
-  [Illustration: printers mark]
-
-  +Illustrated+
-
-  [Illustration: printers mark]
-
-
-  NEW YORK
-  THE CENTURY CO.
-  1898
-
-
-
-
-  Copyright, 1898,
-  By THE CENTURY CO.
-
-
-  THE DE VINNE PRESS.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: decorative page header]
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
-                                            PAGE
-
-    I  THE OCEAN AND ITS ORIGIN      1
-
-    II  WAVES, TIDES, AND CURRENTS      9
-
-    III  THE BUILDING AND RIGGING OF SHIPS      27
-
-    IV  EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS      39
-
-      Part I—Previous to the Discovery of America.
-
-      Part II—From Columbus to Cook.
-
-    V  SECRETS WON FROM THE FROZEN NORTH      77
-
-    VI  WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES      107
-
-      Part I—Wooden Walls, from Salamis to Trafalgar.
-
-      Part II—The Present Era of Steam and Steel.
-
-    VII  THE MERCHANTS OF THE SEA      155
-
-    VIII  ROBBERS OF THE SEAS      171
-
-    IX  YACHTING AND PLEASURE-BOATING      187
-
-    X  DANGERS OF THE DEEP      201
-
-    XI  FISHING AND OTHER MARINE INDUSTRIES      231
-
-    XII  THE PLANTS OF THE SEA AND THEIR USES      249
-
-    XIII  ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA      259
-
-    INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS      275
-
-    GENERAL INDEX      277
-
-[Illustration: oarsmen towing sailing ship]
-
-
-
-
-THE BOOK OF THE OCEAN
-
-[Illustration: rescue of man from the sea]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-THE OCEAN AND ITS ORIGIN
-
-
-Looking at the land, we divide the surface of the earth into eastern
-and western hemispheres; but looking at the water, we make an opposite
-classification. Encircle the globe in your library with a rubber band,
-so that it cuts across South America from about Porto Alegre to Lima
-on one side, and through southern Siam and the northernmost of the
-Philippine Islands on the other, and you make hemispheres, the northern
-of which (with London at its center) contains almost all the land of
-the globe, while the southern (with New Zealand as its central point)
-is almost entirely water, Australia, and the narrow southern half of
-South America being the only lands of consequence in its whole area.
-Observing the map in this way, noticing that, besides nearly a complete
-half-world of water south of your rubber equator, much of the northern
-hemisphere also is afloat, you are willing to believe the assertion
-that there is almost three times as much of the outside of the earth
-hidden under the waves as appears above them. The estimate in round
-numbers is one hundred and fifty million square (statute) miles of
-ocean surface, as compared with about fifty million square miles of
-land on the globe.
-
-To the people whose speculations in geography are the oldest that have
-come down to us, the earth seemed to be an island around which was
-perpetually flowing a river with no further shore visible. Beyond it,
-they thought, lay the abodes of the dead. This river, as the source
-of all other rivers and waters, was deified by the early Greeks and
-placed among their highest gods as Oceanus, whence our word “ocean.”
-Accompanying, or belonging to him, there grew up, in the fertile
-imagination of that poetic people, a large company of gods and
-goddesses, while men hid their absence of real knowledge by peopling
-the deep with quaint monsters.
-
-“The word for ‘ocean’ (_mare_) in the Latin tongue means, by
-derivation, a desert, and the Greeks spoke of it as ‘the barren brine.’”
-
-Over these old fables we need not linger. All the myths and guesswork
-that went before history represented the sea as older than the land,
-and told how creation began by lifting the earth above the universal
-waste of waters. The story in Genesis is only one of many such stories.
-
-[Illustration: A QUIET SEA, AND THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT.
-
-From a photograph.]
-
-Scientific men believe that when our planet first went circling swiftly
-in its orbit it was a glowing, globular mass of fiery vapors; but
-as time passed, the icy chill of space slowly cooled these vapors,
-and chemical changes steadily modified, sorted, and solidified the
-materials into the beginnings of the present form and character, until
-at last _water_ came into existence. This must have been at first in
-the form of a thick envelop of heated vapors, impregnated with gases,
-that inwrapped the globe in a darkness lit only by its own fires.
-
-After that, when further changes had come about,—let us picture
-it,—what deluges of rain were poured out of and down through those
-murky clouds where thunders bellowed and lightnings warred! At first
-all the rains that fell must have been turned to steam again; but by
-and by the steady downpour cooled the shaping globe so that all the
-water was not vaporized, but some stayed as a liquid where it fell,
-and this increased in amount more and more, until finally, between the
-hissing core of the half-hardened planet and the dense clouds which
-kept out all the sunlight, there rolled the heated waves of the first
-ocean—an ocean broken only by the earliest ridges, like chains of
-islands, marking the skeletons of the continents that were to follow—an
-ocean sending up ceaseless volumes of steam to form new clouds.
-
-[Illustration: EATING AWAY THE COAST.]
-
-Yet all the while the cooling of the planet went on. Now, when any
-heated substance cools it contracts, and the globe as a whole is
-no exception to the rule; but a sphere formed of so incompressible
-a substance as rock can shrink only by some sort of folding or
-displacement of its surface. Therefore, as the cooling of our globe
-proceeded, explosions and swellings constantly occurred at weak points
-or lines on or near the surface, where the prodigious strain forced a
-break. That these upheavals were most prominent and extended in the
-northern hemisphere is shown by the fact that the great masses and
-heights of land are grouped there; and the trend of mountain-ranges
-seems to show that the range of breakage and upheaval was in general
-in north-and-south lines. Elsewhere, and mainly in the southern
-hemisphere, broad areas of perhaps stiffer crust sank downward, making
-the vast depressions into which poured the waters of the primeval sea,
-and where our oceans still sway and roll.
-
-[Illustration: SURF AT FORT DUMPLING, R. I.]
-
-All these changes, however, have been in the direction of insuring
-more and more stability; and when the ocean water had thoroughly
-cooled, the very chill of its vast masses in the depths of the troughs
-assisted in the work, for the cold water, by more rapidly withdrawing
-their heat, caused the rocks beneath their basins to become denser,
-thicker, stronger, and consequently less liable to break or change,
-than were those rocks forming the foundations of the continents.
-
-The moment it had shores to beat upon, that moment the ocean began
-to knock them to pieces under its pounding surf, and to grind the
-fragments so small that they could be drifted away, reassorted, and
-deposited wherever the water was sufficiently quiet to let them fall.
-The original rocks—chiefly granite—held the different forms of lime,
-magnesia, etc., to make the limestones; the silica to make the gritty
-sandstones; the alumina to make the clays; and so on. The sea not only
-was the agent to eat this old, rich crust to pieces and respread it
-into strata, but to sort out for us the materials to a considerable
-extent, laying down beds of limestone by themselves, and sandstone,
-shales, marl, etc., by themselves. It is probable, says Professor
-Shaler, that layers of rock twenty miles in thickness have thus been
-laid down on the gradually settling ocean floor, much of which has been
-raised again to form continental lands.
-
-Hitherto we have spoken of the waters that surround the continents as
-if they formed one mass, as, practically, they do; but for convenience
-sake we may designate certain areas by separate names, which ought
-now to be defined. Thus the larger, more open spaces are known as
-_oceans_, and of these five are recognized, namely, Pacific, Atlantic,
-Indian, Arctic, and Antarctic. Parts or branches of these, more or less
-inclosed by land and usually comparatively shallow, are termed _seas_.
-
-_The Pacific Ocean_ is the largest, it alone covering more space than
-all the continents combined, having a breadth, east and west, of ten
-thousand miles (about the length of the Atlantic), and an area of
-seventy million square miles. The equator divides it into the North
-and South Pacific. The former is comparatively free from islands,
-and is inclosed northward by the approaching extremities of Alaska
-and Siberia; while the latter widens at the south into the boundless
-Antarctic Ocean. Its basin is a vast depression of fairly uniform
-depth, studded in the western part by island peaks,—the summits of
-submerged volcanic mountain-ranges. The name “Pacific,” or “Peaceful,”
-was given to it by Magalhaens (Magellan), its first navigator, in 1540
-(see Chapter IV), in his joy at having escaped from the tempestuous
-experience he had long endured in the South Atlantic. On the whole the
-Pacific deserves its name as compared with the Atlantic—a fact chiefly
-due to its great size. The term “South Sea” was formerly much used for
-it, but English-speaking persons now usually mean by that phrase the
-island-studded district between Hawaii and Australia.
-
-[Illustration: PERCÉ ROCK, IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, SHOWING
-DESTRUCTION OF SHORE-ROCKS BY WATER.]
-
-_The Atlantic_ commemorates in its name the myth of Atlas and his
-island. Atlas seems to have been originally, among the Greeks, the
-name of the Peak of Tenerife, of which they had vague information from
-the earlier Phenician sea-wanderers. Then this was forgotten, and in
-place of the fact arose a myth of a Titan who stood upon a vast island
-in or beyond the “Western Sea,” called Atlantis. Legends of wars with
-its people form a part of the nebulous hero-story of the beginnings of
-Athens; and it is said to have sunk out of sight long before records
-began. There have always been those who believed this story founded
-upon fact, and only a few years ago a book was printed in the United
-States arguing that the tale was the history of a real land; but not
-only is there no literary or historical evidence that Atlantis had
-any firmer foundation than vague memories of the Cape Verd or Canary
-Islands, but every evidence of the geological condition and history
-of the eastern shores and bed of the middle Atlantic Ocean shows that
-no such convulsion as the destruction of this island calls for ever
-took place there, or that there was ever such a land to be submerged.
-The Atlantic occupies a long, winding, comparatively narrow trough,
-that measures about ten thousand miles north and south, from the ice
-of the Antarctic to the ice of the Arctic ocean, and has only a few
-islets south of Iceland, the Faroes and the Shetlands, which rise from
-a plateau stretching from Labrador to Great Britain, the higher points
-of which were probably above the water within comparatively recent
-geological times, possibly since man appeared upon the globe. The
-average depth of the Atlantic south of this ridge is about thirteen
-thousand feet, but greater depths are found along the African and
-American coasts, on each side of a long submerged ridge from which rise
-the isolated islands of Cape Verd, St. Helena, and Tristan da Cunha.
-The width from Norway to Greenland is only about eight hundred miles,
-but between Montevideo and Cape Town it is thirty-six hundred miles,
-and the average width is about three thousand miles. The shape and
-situation of the Atlantic make it the most stormy of the three great
-oceans, and it is the one where the phenomena of tides, currents, etc.,
-are most prominently manifested, as we shall see. It is also the most
-frequented and best known, because it has been necessary to study it
-for the benefit of commerce.
-
-_The Indian Ocean_ is simply the extension of the vast southern
-water-zone northward of parallel 40°, south latitude, where, from the
-Cape of Good Hope to Tasmania, it is six thousand miles in width.
-At this line the depth suddenly decreases, as though the edge of a
-submerged Antarctic plateau defined the southerly rim of its basin
-there. This ocean contains several large and some groups of small
-islands, but these are mostly near the shore, and connected with the
-neighboring continent by shallow waters, showing that they rise from
-a submerged plateau. The average depth of the Indian Ocean is about
-fourteen thousand feet; its surface-water is warmer and salter than
-that of any other; and its winds and weather are more regular and
-peaceful than in either the Atlantic or the North Pacific.
-
-_The Arctic Ocean_ is the well-defined body of water around and
-probably over the north pole. It is connected with the Pacific only
-by the narrow and very shallow Bering Strait, and with the Atlantic
-by comparatively narrow openings. It has been fairly well explored as
-far north as the parallel of 80°, and found to contain many islands;
-but it appears that there is great depth of water north of Spitzbergen
-and northeast of Greenland, making it probable that the trough of the
-Atlantic reaches to or beyond the pole itself. Most of its area is
-covered with drifting ice.
-
-_The Antarctic Ocean_ is regarded as the space of water within the
-Antarctic circle; but this is surrounded by a zone of deep ocean,
-unbroken almost half-way to the equator, except by the narrow southern
-part of South America and by New Zealand. It is an area, apparently
-rather shallow, of ice, fogs, and tempestuous gales, inclosing lands of
-unknown extent.
-
-[Illustration: WAVE-WORN CLIFFS AND PEBBLE-BEACH AT ETRETAT, FRANCE.
-
-(FROM A PAINTING BY WILLIAM P. W. DANA.)]
-
-But these geographical distinctions are merely convenient methods of
-speech. After all, there is only one ocean “poured round all,” and its
-particles are incessantly changed in place and remingled by means of
-a world-wide system of tides and currents, the effect of which is to
-keep sea-water everywhere uniform in character and perfectly pure and
-healthful.
-
-[Illustration: IN MID-OCEAN: A GREAT WAVE.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-WAVES, TIDES, AND CURRENTS
-
-
-Now that we have studied the ancient ocean, it is time to study its
-present characteristics and understand the great and important part it
-plays in the world.
-
-A very striking thing about the ocean is its flatness. Being water,
-it seeks always to find its level; and we commonly assume that it
-everywhere does so, and take the sea-level as the standard from which
-to calculate all heights above or depths below its surface; that is,
-we assume that every part of the surface of the ocean when calm and at
-mean tide is exactly the same distance from the center of the globe.
-This, however, is not wholly true. Careful observation has shown that
-the Pacific is several feet lower on the western shore of the Isthmus
-of Darien than is the Atlantic on its eastern shore—a fact due, no
-doubt, to the crowding of water by the Gulf Stream into the Caribbean
-Sea. The Mediterranean is known to be somewhat higher than the
-Atlantic, and other differences exist in similar places elsewhere.
-
-This introduces the subject of depth—a matter which we have learned
-accurately only within a very few years. In the early days ropes alone
-were used for sounding, and these had to be of considerable size to
-bear the strain; but a mile or so of rope became too heavy to handle,
-and depths below that length remained unmeasured. Then a little machine
-was tried consisting of a heavy weight having attached to it, by a
-trigger, a wooden float. This was thrown overboard. It sank, and when
-it touched bottom the shock released the float. From the time that
-elapsed before the float reappeared the depth was estimated. This,
-however, was little better than guesswork; and accurate soundings
-exceeding one thousand fathoms were not obtained until an American
-naval officer began to use wire instead of rope. From this hint
-was developed elaborate machinery, operated by steam, using steel
-piano-wire, having automatic registers of the amount reeled out, and
-carried down by weights that were released when the bottom was struck,
-making it easier to recover the wire. To these weights (or rather to
-the wire just above them) were attached devices for clutching and
-bringing to the surface specimens of the bottom, self-closing jars to
-fetch water from the lowest layer, self-registering thermometers that
-recorded the temperatures at the greatest or at various intermediate
-depths, and other means of learning the character of the water,
-bottom-material, and animal life several miles below the surface,
-including methods of photographing by aid of a submerged electric
-light. Such investigations, carried on in ships suitably equipped, have
-been prosecuted by several governments, most notably by the expedition
-of the _Challenger_, a British surveying-ship which circumnavigated the
-globe during the years from 1872 to 1876.
-
-[Illustration: SEA-CAVE NEAR GIANT’S CAUSEWAY, NORTH OF IRELAND.]
-
-This and many other expeditions have sounded in all parts of the world,
-and explored large tracts where the water uniformly exceeded three
-miles in depth. The United States ship _Enterprise_, after passing the
-Chatham Islands in her run from New Zealand to the Strait of Magellan,
-found the water everywhere more than thirteen thousand feet deep.
-Throughout her run from Montevideo to New York the water varied from
-twelve to eighteen thousand feet deep, and Captain Nares and Admiral
-Belknap found like depths over equally vast breadths elsewhere.
-
-Yet even in these basins more profound pits and valleys exist. Several
-places are known near Japan and off Porto Rico exceeding five miles
-in depth; and an English officer sounded 29,400 feet in the southern
-Pacific Ocean, nineteen hundred miles east of Brisbane, without finding
-bottom.
-
-The average depth of all the oceans is estimated at from twelve
-thousand to fifteen thousand feet. As, according to Humboldt, the
-average height of the lands of the globe is only about one thousand
-feet, it will be seen that all the land now above the water, and its
-foundations, could be shoveled into the ocean troughs and still leave
-water more than two miles in depth covering the whole planet.
-
-The soundings and dredgings of which I have spoken enable us to make
-a tolerable map of the ocean beds and to describe their features.
-All the continents are bordered by a shelf reaching out under the
-shallow shore-water to a greater or less distance, and then dropping,
-usually with much abruptness, to the ocean trough. This shelf, perhaps
-originally a part of the primeval continent, bears most of the great
-islands near continents, such as Newfoundland, the West Indies, Great
-Britain and Ireland, Madagascar, the Aleutian, Japanese, and Philippine
-groups, the Malay Archipelago, and others. If you will look at a map
-that has marked upon it the line of one thousand fathoms’ depth along
-the shores of the various continents, you will find it reaching far
-out from the eastern shores of both Americas, the western and northern
-shores of Europe, the eastern shores of South Africa, prolonging India
-hundreds of miles, and embracing great spaces among the East Indies,
-while even the hundred-fathom line would connect many an island with
-the mainland or with some other island, as they actually have been
-connected in times gone by. The fact is, there is not a single proper
-mountain-peak rising out of deep water at any great distance from the
-margins of the continents. All the numerous islands of the wide oceans
-are either coral reefs or the summits of volcanic cones.
-
-Upon this shelf, and for the most part within two hundred miles of the
-coast, are deposited all of the materials torn from the land by the sea
-or brought down by rivers or glaciers, excepting the very finest, which
-currents may float somewhat farther out, and also excepting the rocks
-that icebergs carry away and drop in mid-ocean; but this is not a great
-amount, for most icebergs strand on the shallows off Newfoundland or in
-Bering Sea.
-
-Almost nothing from the shores, therefore, reaches the central depths
-of the open oceans, whose beds are in substantially the same condition
-that they were in at the beginning, except for two things—volcanic
-upheavals in some places, and the remains of animal life everywhere.
-The former exception is a very important one, since it is now known,
-according to Professor Shaler, that volcanoes, by their eruptions, send
-more dust and broken materials to the seas than the rivers and shores
-combined.
-
-[Illustration: THE VOLCANO KRAKATOA (SUNDA STRAIT) IN ERUPTION IN 1883.]
-
-“Although the deeper sea-floors probably lack mountains,” says
-Professor Shaler, “they are not without striking reliefs, which,
-if they could be seen, would present all the dignity which their
-size gives to the Himalayas or Andes: the difference is that these
-elevations are not true mountains, but volcanic peaks, sometimes
-isolated, again accumulated in long, narrow ridges, but all made up of
-matter poured out from the craters or through great fissures in the
-crust. So numerous are these heaped masses of lava and other ejections
-from these vents that there is hardly any considerable area of the
-oceans where they do not rise above the surface. There are indeed
-thousands of these volcanic peaks distributed from pole to pole....
-Thus on the floor of the North Atlantic there is evidently a long,
-irregular chain of these elevations extending from the Icelandic group
-of islands southward to the Azores. If an explorer could view this part
-of the sea-bottom, he would probably find that the line of craters was
-as continuous as that exhibited by the volcanoes of the Andes.
-
-“Besides the volcanic peaks,” Professor Shaler continues, “the
-sea-bottom in certain parts of the tropics ... is beset with the
-singular elevations formed by coral reefs.” But of these I shall have
-more to say toward the end of the book, and I allude to them here only
-as a feature of the invisible landscape beneath the waves.
-
-Over the vast, gently undulating spaces separating these submerged
-lines of volcanoes and the ridges of coral, lies a mat of mud of
-unknown thickness, which naturalists term “ooze.” It is principally
-composed of volcanic dust and of the microscopic “tests,” or flinty
-limy skeletons of minute animals, few of which are large enough to be
-seen by the unaided eye. “Dwelling in myriads in the superficial parts
-of the sea, these foraminifera, as they are termed, sink at death to
-the bottom, over which they accumulate a thick coating of minutely
-divided limestone powder, forming a layer of ooze as unsubstantial as
-the finest snow.”
-
-In regions like the North Atlantic this ooze consists almost wholly of
-such animal matter; but in other regions, such as the South Pacific,
-where volcanoes prevail, it is constantly and largely increased by an
-enormous quantity of mineral matter hurled broadcast by volcanoes,
-all of which are on islands or near sea-coasts. A part of this is the
-merest dust, which slowly settles from the air, perhaps hundreds of
-miles from where it was ejected. A larger part consists of that spongy
-lava called pumice, which is so full of holes filled with air and
-gases that it may float half way around the globe before it sinks, as
-happened after the explosion of Krakatoa.
-
-Into the oceanic ooze, too, sinks so much of all dead fishes and other
-mid-sea animals as is not dissolved or devoured before reaching it; and
-it forms the grave of thousands of men. It is often said that ships
-and other things would not sink far, but would float, suspended by
-dense water or some miraculous influence, only a few hundred or a few
-thousand feet below the surface, for no one knows how long. But this
-eerie notion has no foundation in fact. “No other fate,” we are assured
-by those who know, “awaits the drowned sailor or his ship than that
-which comes to the marine creatures who die on the bottom of the sea.
-In time their dust all passes into the great storehouse of the earth,
-even as those who receive burial on land.” Wooden wrecks probably last
-much longer than those of iron.
-
-I have mentioned that a small part of what the sea tears away from the
-land, or receives from rivers, winds, and other sources, is dissolved
-in its waters, which now contain, no doubt, samples of every ingredient
-of the rocks and soils of the dry land, and very likely some elements
-not yet detected. This solvent power of the sea explains its saltness,
-and it must go on growing more and more bitter as long as its waves
-grind at the shores and the rivers run down. The salinity varies in
-degree, water at great depths being salter than that near the surface,
-and excelling in saltness where evaporation is rapid, as under the
-trade-winds, while fresher in the regions of equatorial calms, where an
-immense amount of rain falls; broadly, the lightest (freshest) water
-is found at the equator, and the heaviest in the temperate regions.
-Inclosed, or nearly inclosed, areas become very salt. Thus the Dead Sea
-is what chemists call a saturated solution, being nearly one third (28
-per cent.) salt, and Great Salt Lake in Utah is not far behind. The Red
-Sea contains 4 per cent., and some parts of the Mediterranean nearly as
-much. Taking all the open oceans together, about 3½ in every 100 parts
-(3½ per cent.) is composed of various salts, more than three quarters
-of which is common salt (chloride of sodium), and the remainder mainly
-forms of magnesium. One of the _Challenger_ authors has estimated that
-the oceans contain enough salt to make a layer 170 feet thick over
-their whole area, and another writer says that the amount, if heaped
-up, would be four times larger than the whole bulk of Europe above the
-level of high-water mark, mountains and all.
-
-In early times, indeed, sea-water, which yields about a quarter of
-a pound of crystallized salt per gallon, was almost the only source
-of salt for food. Even yet it is the principal source of supply for
-the manufacture of commercial salt in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy,
-Austria, the West Indies, and Central and South America; and it is
-largely used in Holland, Belgium, and Great Britain. The early process,
-still extensively practised in some parts of Europe, was to admit
-the sea-water to large partitioned flats floored with clay, where it
-evaporated rapidly. The salt-crystals remaining were then collected,
-purified to a greater or less degree, and sold off-hand. It was by
-similar means that our great-grandfathers in New England and along the
-Southern coasts provided themselves with salt, only they used large
-vats arranged over fires instead of earthen basins exposed to the sun.
-
-But analysis of sea-water discloses small quantities of many other
-recognizable minerals. Silica must be there to supply the needs of many
-foraminifers, sponges, and other animals; lime in various forms exists,
-or else such sea animals as mollusks could not compose their shells,
-nor polyps erect their enormous reefs; bromine is present, and to the
-iodine and other mineral dyes in the water we owe the lovely purples,
-crimsons, and scarlets painting corallines, seaweeds, echinoderms, and
-some molluscan shells, as that of the Sargasso-snail (Janthina).
-
-As for gold and silver, both are present. I have seen it stated that a
-voyage of a year or two is sufficient to permit the formation of a film
-of silver all over the copper sheathing of a ship’s bottom, so that
-a frigate returning from a long cruise is really silver-plated; but I
-fancy this is more a matter of imagination than visible reality. Gold,
-in certain chemical combinations, certainly exists in sea-water, and
-may be extracted therefrom. Up to the present, however, the cost of the
-extraction has been more than the precious metal obtained was worth.
-Gold is often washed from sea-sand.
-
-[Illustration: A FIORD, OR DEEP CREVICE WORN IN SEA-CLIFFS.]
-
-The ceaseless restlessness of the ocean forms another of the greatest
-contrasts between it and the immovable land—_terra firma_, as those
-like to call it who have been tossing too long on the “rolling deep”.
-This characteristic restlessness involves some of the most important
-and interesting facts in physical geography; for were the waters
-still,—that is, were the oceans simply huge, quiet ponds,—none of that
-action could take place along the shores which has been so important
-an agent in shaping the world and making it a suitable place for human
-habitation and social development.
-
-On a planet with an atmosphere and changing seasons like ours, however,
-a stagnant ocean is as impossible as a motionless air; indeed, it is
-because the air _is_ always in motion that large bodies of water are
-never at rest, for it is the changing density and temperature and
-movements (winds) of the air that produce waves and currents.
-
-Waves are caused by the pressure and friction of the wind upon the
-surface of the water, as you may readily see at any pond; and the water
-in them simply rises and falls, driving forward a little at the very
-surface so as to cause a gentle current called _wind-drift_. When the
-waves approach the shallow, sloping border of the land they are checked
-at the bottom by the slope of the beach, while the freer upper part
-goes forward, and the waves speedily lose their rounded form and become
-more and more sharply ridged and steep on the front side as they sweep
-on until at last they pitch forward in the crash and thunder of surf.
-
-In the open ocean the waves are usually doing little work except to
-cause the surface to rise and fall. The harder the wind blows, the
-higher the waves become, and the faster they travel. This speed has
-been calculated, and has been found to be proportionate to size.
-
-“Waves 200 feet long from hollow to hollow,” we are told, “travel about
-19 knots per hour; those of 400 feet in length make 27 knots; and
-those of 600 feet rush forward irresistibly at 32 knots.” These, of
-course, are under the furious impulse of a gale, and it is marvelous
-that ships can be made to ride over them; nor is it any wonder that
-excited mariners clinging to the bulwarks of some small and heeling
-craft, should call them “mountain high,” and declare in all seriousness
-that they have seen their crests rising one hundred feet above their
-hollows. No such altitude, nor half of it, probably, is ever reached
-by a storm-wave in the heaviest cyclone. An excellent authority,
-Lieutenant Qualtrough, assures us that the highest trustworthy
-measurements are from forty-four to forty-eight feet. The height of a
-wave depends upon what mariners call its “fetch”—that is, its distance
-from the place where the waves began to form. This has been worked
-out mathematically by Thomas Stevenson (father of the late Robert
-Louis Stevenson, the novelist), an eminent engineer and designer of
-lighthouses, who gives the following formula: “The height of the wave
-in feet is equal to 1½ multiplied by the square root of the fetch in
-nautical miles.” If the waves began 100 miles away from your ship, the
-waves about you will be 15 feet high, because the square root of 100
-is 10, and one and a half times 10 is 15 (feet). The highest waves are
-not formed in the greatest tempests, which beat down their crests, but
-when the gale is both very strong and long continued. The worst “seas,”
-as sailors call big waves, are those met with off the Cape of Good Hope
-and Cape Horn.
-
-The depth to which wave disturbance extends depends on the violence of
-the wind, and near shore upon the slope of the bottom. Prestwich tells
-us that pebbles may sometimes be moved at the depth of one hundred
-feet, and sand much deeper, as is shown by the fact that the bottom is
-disturbed in heavy storms on the Banks of Newfoundland.
-
-The weight and power of such on-rushing masses of water are tremendous,
-as appears from the effect on coasts where they strike; but this
-opens up a subject which is too large for treatment here, and I must
-refer readers to geological treatises, and to such special works as
-Professor N. S. Shaler’s excellent “Sea and Land,” where the work of
-the ocean in tearing down and building up its coasts is fully and
-entertainingly explained. I shall have something more to say on
-this point, also, when I come to the chapter “Dangers of the Deep,”
-and speak of the terrible destruction caused by earthquakes, and in
-certain other agitations of the sea not due to the wind, and often
-styled “tidal waves.” There is only one kind of “tidal wave,” properly
-speaking, however; and this is a theoretical rather than an actual one,
-perceptible usually only in that rising and falling of the water along
-coasts twice each twenty-four hours that we call the flow and ebb of
-the tides; and here we see the effect rather than the thing itself.
-
-[Illustration: LOW TIDE, ST. JOHN’S HARBOR, N. B.]
-
-The tide has been an inevitable circumstance of the existence on the
-earth of the ocean, or any other great body of water, ever since its
-origin, yet it was not until Sir Isaac Newton made us comprehend
-the law of gravitation that its mystery was explained. We now know
-with certainty—if you want the mathematical formulæ and so forth,
-consult some good modern encyclopædia under the word _tide_—that this
-periodical rising and falling of the sea is due to the attraction of
-the sun and moon,—to the last three times as much as to the first,
-because it is so much nearer. This attraction is exerted toward the
-globe as a whole; and its visible effect upon the movable water is to
-lift it bodily on that side nearest the moon, and at the same time to
-pull away the earth from the water on the opposite side, which amounts
-to the same thing; and thus high tides are simultaneously produced
-at these antipodes, which accounts for the two a day. At the same
-time, however, the intermediate spaces have low tides caused by an
-attraction there toward the center of the earth. “There are thus always
-simultaneously and directly under the moon two high waters opposite
-each other, and two low waters at equal distances between them. Owing
-to the rotation of the earth, this permanent system of swells and
-troughs travels from east to west over every part of the ocean and of
-its coast, and explains the regular succession of rising and falling
-waters, at equal intervals of time, which we call the tides.”
-
-[Illustration: THE EARTHQUAKE WAVE PASSING OVER THE LIGHTHOUSE ON POINT
-ANJER.]
-
-But the sun also exerts a similar but lesser influence, producing
-four daily solar tides, which most of the time are lost to view in
-the greater lunar tides. When, however, the moon gets into line with
-the earth and the sun, so that both the heavenly bodies pull together
-like a tandem team, as happens twice a month,—at new moon and full
-moon,—their combined action causes unusually high water, which is the
-sum of the lunar and solar tides, and is called the spring tide. High
-water is then highest, and low water lowest. On the other hand, in the
-midst of these fortnightly intervals, when the moon is at its first
-or third quarter, the sun is a full quarter of the heavens (90°) away
-from the moon. Its influence, therefore, acts at right angles to or
-practically against that of the moon, and the solar tides go to swell
-the low waters and diminish the high waters, forming what sailors call
-neap tides,—preserving an old English word meaning _low_.
-
-Now remember that the globe is not standing still, even while we make
-these explanations, but is revolving at a tremendous speed, so that the
-water under the moon lifted by lunar attraction is changing place every
-instant at the rate of over one thousand miles an hour, and you have
-the conception of a low wave on each side of the earth, reaching north
-and south, highest and swiftest on the equator and diminishing toward
-the poles. These are the true tidal waves. Were the globe covered with
-an unbroken mantle of water, such waves, each about twenty inches (or
-twenty-nine inches at springtide) high on the average at the equator,
-would follow one another round and round the earth at the rate of one
-complete circuit in every twenty-four hours. That must have been the
-case in the primeval ocean before any continents existed; and something
-of it still exists in the belt of unobstructed water surrounding the
-Antarctic continent of ice. It would then be flood tide or ebb tide
-at the same hour along the whole length of any one meridian. But in
-the present condition of the globe, where the oceans are separated by
-continents and broken by islands, the progress of the tidal waves is
-obstructed, deflected, and wholly stopped in a great variety of ways
-and places, so that the hours, amount, and behavior of the tides are
-exceedingly varied in different regions, and are often very puzzling,
-forming one of the most difficult matters with which the practical
-navigator has to deal. Interference of tidal currents forms the
-Maelstrom, off the coast of Norway, whose revolution is reversed twice
-daily, the classic Scylla and Charybdis, in the Straits of Messina, so
-much dreaded by the navigators of old, and many other whirlpools of
-less celebrity. The tidal wave sweeping northward across the Atlantic
-has time to round the northern end of Scotland and flood the German
-Ocean with southward swelling currents before the rising water pouring
-into the southern end of the English Channel has time to push its way
-through that narrow and shallow passage; hence the two floods meet in
-the Straits of Dover, which accounts for the miserable chop-sea so
-sadly prevalent in that unfortunate bit of water.
-
-The natural height of the tide seems to be from two to five feet, as
-shown in the midst of the broad Pacific. “But when dashing against the
-land, and forced into deep gulfs and estuaries,” to quote Professor
-Simon Newcomb, “the accumulating tide-waters sometimes reach a very
-great height. On the eastern coast of North America, which is directly
-in the path of the great Atlantic wave, the tide rises on an average
-from 9 to 12 feet. In the Bay of Fundy, which opens its bosom to
-receive the full wave, the tide, which at the entrance is 18 feet,
-rushes with great fury into that long and narrow channel, and swells
-to the enormous height of 60 feet, and even to 70 feet in the highest
-spring tides. In the Bristol Channel, on the coast of England, the
-spring tides rise to 40 feet, and swell to 50 in the English Channel at
-St. Malo on the coast of France.”
-
-To this cause is also due in some degree those great oceanic currents
-which form another striking fact in the history of the sea; but they
-are mainly due to temperature, wind, and the rotation of the earth.
-
-The drops that make up a body of water are the most restless things in
-the world; they are always sliding down the least slope, sinking out
-of the way of lighter substances, rising to let a heavier object pass
-beneath them, or moving hither and thither in an ever hopeful search of
-that levelness and quiet that we call equilibrium. Furthermore, when
-water is heated it becomes lighter. Should, therefore, a portion of
-the sea grow warmer than the remainder, it must and will rise to the
-surface; and whenever a portion becomes cooled, it must and will sink.
-
-Now, under the continuous blazing sun of the torrid zone the sea-water
-near the surface gets fairly warm,—having an average temperature of
-about 85° along the equator,—while in the polar regions the ocean is
-always chilled by permanent or floating ice until it is nearly cold
-enough to freeze; but these masses of warm and cold water cannot remain
-separate in the universal ocean. The hot tropical flood, continually
-rising, _must_ flow away somewhere to find its level; and it can flow
-nowhere except toward the poles, for there the ever-sinking volume of
-chilled and therefore heavier water sucks it in to take its place,
-while it, in turn, creeps underneath toward the equator, there to fill
-the gap which the escaping warm water leaves behind. So we know there
-is constantly going on an interchange of water—a constant flowing
-_away_ from the equator northward and southward on the surface, and a
-flowing in _toward_ the equator along the bottom; an endless springing
-up in the torrid zone and a steady settling down in the polar seas. One
-out of many proofs of this fact is that the thalassal abysses below the
-depth of a mile or so are known to be ice-cold. This could not happen
-unless they were constantly filled and refilled with new water from the
-great coolers at the poles; for if the water at those depths should
-remain unchanged, it would soon become very warm from the heat of the
-interior of the earth, whence it does constantly extract some heat.
-
-But while this invisible _vertical circulation_ is going on, another
-more visible and interesting set of movements is in progress on the
-surface, forming what are known as _ocean currents_. These are vast
-rivers in the ocean flowing across its face in certain directions and
-to a certain depth, as rivers make their way along the land. They
-begin and are kept going mainly by a union of the two causes already
-explained—heat and wind.
-
-[Illustration: A STEAMER BORNE ASHORE BY AN EARTHQUAKE-WAVE.]
-
-The heat of the sun at the equator, warming, lightening, and
-evaporating the water, constantly tends to draw the colder water from
-the poles, most copiously from the South Pole; but the Antarctic water,
-hastening to the equator, is soon interrupted by the extremities of
-Australia, Africa, and South America, and so split into three great
-branches. That which passes into the South Atlantic goes on northward
-along the western coast of Africa, part of it becoming so warm under
-the hot sun there that it will not sink, but constantly comes more and
-more to the surface, until it strikes against the great shoulder of
-Guinea and is turned sharply westward. Now it is squarely under the
-trade-wind and headed the same way; constantly urged forward by this
-moderate but endless tugging of the wind upon its waves, the current
-can never swerve, but flows along the equator, and for half a dozen
-degrees each side of it, straight across the Atlantic. South America,
-however, stands in its path, and the wedge-like coast of Brazil,
-pointed with Cape St. Roque, splits this great river. Part of it now
-turns southward and swings back across toward Africa, making an eddy
-a couple of thousand miles wide in the South Atlantic, while another
-arm runs down the Patagonian coast. But by far the largest part of the
-divided current is sent northward, past the coast of upper Brazil into
-the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, where it is well heated, and
-thence poured into the North Atlantic, to become widely celebrated as
-the _Gulf Stream_.
-
-Gathered in full force, the Gulf Stream flows northward close along
-the coast of our Southern States at the rate of eighty or ninety miles
-a day until Cape Hatteras gives it a swerve away, when it strikes out
-to sea and pushes straight across to Spain, where a branch leaves it
-and runs northward between Iceland and the British Islands, while the
-main body turns southward to mingle again with the equatorial current
-from Africa and repeat its journey all over again. It is in the heart
-of this great circle of currents in the middle of the Atlantic that
-navigators find that dreaded region of heat and calms which they call
-the Doldrums; and here, too, float round and round the wide, buoyant
-meadows of the Sargasso Sea.
-
-Meanwhile another most important cold stream is making its way through
-the Atlantic, known as the Arctic current. It comes down out of
-Baffin’s Bay, joins a similar flood from the outer coast of Greenland,
-is thrown up to the surface by the Banks of Newfoundland (where meeting
-warm air, it produces those thick and prolonged fogs so common in that
-region), fills the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the bight between Nova
-Scotia and Cape Cod with chilly water, and finally dips under the Gulf
-Stream amid that commotion of winds and waters that makes the track
-of the steamships between New York and Europe the most tempestuous of
-ocean highways. It is the mingling of these warm and cold waters there
-which is chiefly responsible for the stormy condition of the North
-Atlantic.
-
-The Pacific has a similar arrangement of circulation north and south of
-the equator. The Antarctic waters form a cold stream named the Humboldt
-current, which pours up the western side of South America, keeping the
-climate down to a far more wintry condition than it is entitled to by
-latitude, until it reaches the southern trade-winds, which sweep it
-westward straight across the Pacific, where much of it is lost among
-the archipelagoes of Oceanica, and the southern part flows onward into
-the Indian Ocean.
-
-North of the Pacific equator a similar westward current moves steadily
-over the great waste of waters past the Sandwich Islands to the coast
-of China. From the Philippines and Japan northward, however, there
-is a far stronger flow, known to the Japanese as the Black Current
-(Kuroshiwo), which skirts the coast of Japan and the Kurile Islands,
-makes these and Kamchatka habitable, then turns sharply east along
-the front of the foggy Aleutian chain of islands, and broadening and
-cooling as it turns, swings down the temperate coast of Alaska and
-gradually disappears. These two great currents and their inclosed
-eddies are far broader and less distinct than those of the North and
-South Atlantic, but they follow the same laws.
-
-In a similar but lesser way the Indian Ocean has a strong westerly
-stream flowing straight across from Australia to South Africa, which
-is of immense help to ships returning from the East around the Cape of
-Good Hope. From Mozambique the water turns northward to make the return
-round, but here it is complicated by the peculiar conditions made by
-the inflow and outflow of the Red Sea, Arabian Gulf, and so on, and
-by the disturbing influences of the monsoons, until it can hardly be
-defined.
-
-Of all these currents none is as well marked as the Gulf Stream. Its
-blue water is in such contrast to the darker, greenish hue of the
-remainder of the ocean that sailors can often tell when they enter the
-edge of the current, half their vessel being in and half out of the
-stream. If you approach from the west you find that the water at first
-shows a warmth of only fifty or sixty degrees near the surface; but as
-you sail on, this increases until, opposite Sandy Hook, you may get
-as high a reading on the thermometer as eighty degrees, and opposite
-Florida above one hundred degrees. This difference in temperature
-between the eastern and western margins of the Gulf Stream is owing to
-the presence of the great river of Arctic water flowing in an opposite
-direction between the Gulf Stream and the shore. Off Florida the Gulf
-Stream is about sixty miles wide; off New York it is over one hundred
-miles in width, but is less sharply defined. Its depth is hard to
-determine, but certainly amounts to several hundred feet. It is worth
-remembering that, although some guesses had been made at it before, Dr.
-Benjamin Franklin was the first man to study the Gulf Stream and to
-tell us anything of its origin and course.
-
-The way in which some of these ocean currents affect the weather of
-the lands upon which they border shows how great is the influence of
-the sea upon land-climates; indeed, it may be truthfully said that
-only the continents and such great islands as Australia or Madagascar
-have any climate essentially distinct from that of the ocean in their
-quarter of the globe. But the equability that would reign over an ocean
-of quiet water, determining the amount of cold and heat by regular
-gradation in latitude between the equator and the poles, is completely
-upset by the great current-movements I have outlined. Scotland, for
-example, lies as far north as Labrador, and the latitude of London is
-above that of Lake Superior, yet neither have those terrible frosts and
-heavy snows which prevail in Canada, and make Labrador a land of ice
-almost uninhabitable. This difference is due almost wholly to the fact
-that the Gulf Stream pours its warm flood against the coast of Great
-Britain, and even tempers the Norwegian coast, keeps Barentz’s Sea
-largely free from summer ice, and clothes Spitzbergen with vegetation,
-although within ten degrees of the pole. Hence in the forests of
-northern Scandinavia Laps can dwell in much comfort on a line with the
-frozen barren grounds north of Hudson Bay.
-
-[Illustration: A ROUGH NIGHT IN THE GULF STREAM.]
-
-On the other hand, the unfortunate coasts of Greenland are bathed in
-water chilled by months of captivity near the pole, and loaded with
-ice that cools down all the winds that blow ashore. Greenland itself
-is covered with an unbroken sheet of ice, hundreds or thousands of
-feet thick, yet most of it is no farther north than Sweden. The whole
-northeastern coast of America, down to Labrador, is incrusted with
-ice; and the region south of the St. Lawrence has a similar climate to
-Finland; while even farther south, Boston, within the protecting arm of
-Cape Cod, is in winter a city of frost and snow and fog from November
-till April, when it really is little farther north than sunny Naples,
-where one laughs at winter.
-
-Similarly, in the Pacific Ocean, the northward movement of the great
-Japanese current makes the coast of China habitable and pleasant clear
-to the Sea of Okhotsk, gives the Aleutian archipelago a pretty decent
-climate, and causes the islands and coasts of Alaska and British
-Columbia to nourish the most magnificent forests in America, and to
-have a climate resembling that of Great Britain. Glasgow and Sitka
-are, in fact, in the same latitude, and under very similar climatic
-conditions, except that in Scotland there are no such lofty and cold
-mountains to precipitate constant rains as is the case along the
-northwestern margin of America.
-
-Similar examples and contrasts might be drawn in other parts of the
-world. The weather in the interior of continents is pretty much
-alike on similar latitudes the world round, varying with height; but
-the climate of all sea-coasts is good or bad as a place to live, in
-accordance with the temperature of the water which the currents bring
-to that part of the ocean.
-
-But the currents of the ocean influence something besides the weather.
-Upon them depends to a considerable extent whether a certain part of
-the coast shall have one or another kind of animals dwelling in the
-salt water. This is not so much true of fishes as it is of the mollusks
-or “shell-fish,” the worms that live in the mud of the tide-flats, the
-anemones, sea-urchins, starfish and little clinging people of the wet
-rocks, and of the jellyfishes, great and small, that swim about in the
-open sea.
-
-Nothing would injure most of these “small fry” more than a change in
-the water making it a few degrees colder or warmer than they were
-accustomed to. Since the constant circulation of the currents keeps
-the ocean water in all its parts almost precisely of the same density,
-and food seems about as likely to abound in one district as another,
-naturalists have concluded that it is temperature which decides the
-extent of coast or of sea-area where any one kind of invertebrate
-animal will be found. It thus happens that the life of Cuban waters is
-different from that of our Carolina coast; and that, again, largely
-separate from what you will see off New York; while Cape Cod seems to
-run out as a partition between the shore life south of it and a very
-different set of shells, sand-worms, and so forth, characteristic of
-the colder waters to the northward.
-
-Out in the ocean, however, the warm current of the Gulf Stream forms
-a genial pathway along which southern swimming animals, like the
-wondrously beautiful Portuguese-man-o’-war (Physalia), may wander
-northward for hundreds of miles beyond where they are found near shore;
-yet if by chance they stray outside the limits of the warm Gulf Stream,
-they will at once be chilled to death, as happened once to millions of
-tile-fish.
-
-Ocean currents carry floating burdens long distances. They bring the
-icebergs to form those terrible fogs of Alaska and Newfoundland; and
-they often bear far away the logs that float out of tropical rivers.
-
-[Illustration: A YOUNG SHIP-RIGGER.]
-
-These drifting logs often have plants growing upon them or contain
-quantities of seeds which are not injured by their short voyages.
-When, therefore, the coral polyps build up one of their reef-islands
-until it appears above the waves, thither the currents bring roots
-and seeds from neighboring islands, and quickly plant them upon the
-new barren shores, so that in a few seasons the little islet becomes
-green and wooded and ready to hold its own against the winds and
-waves. Moreover, the same drifting stuff will carry land animals
-as passengers,—insects, snails of many kinds, reptiles, and even
-four-footed beasts,—and so not only give the island a vegetation, but
-populate it with various of the smaller animals. This seems to you,
-perhaps, a very accidental and haphazard way of fitting out a country
-so that presently it may support human beings, nor is it the only
-means by which barren islands become productive; but it is important
-as far as it goes, and when we study into the distribution of plants
-and animals in an archipelago, we are pretty sure to find those of the
-same sort upon islands that lie in the same current—even to the human
-inhabitants.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III
-
-THE BUILDING AND RIGGING OF SHIPS
-
-
-As late as 1861 an exploring ship was visited by natives of Western
-Australia, riding simple rough logs. To smooth and sharpen the log’s
-end and then to hollow it out has been thought to be the first step
-taken by primitive man in his progress toward a boat; but I think the
-dugout probably came later, or at any rate no earlier, than the folding
-of bark into a trough and tying up the ends, as some savages are still
-content to do. In North America, where materials were favorable,
-this germ developed into the very highest type of canoe—the Algonkin
-birch-bark. It may have been an attempt to imitate the bark canoe in a
-more durable form which led to the laborious hollowing of dugouts; but
-here again, in regions where suitable trees grew, the art developed
-so highly as to produce the great sea-boats of the Papuans and our
-Northwest Coast Indians, carved from a single log, yet able to carry
-sixty or more persons and their luggage. Such boats as these, when
-provided with sails, are practically “ships,” and satisfy every need of
-their owners.
-
-Another root of naval architecture lies in the raft, which long ago
-reached a high degree of usefulness in the sea-going balsa of western
-South America. It is probable that the South Sea catamaran is a clever
-outgrowth of experience with a raft. In Polynesia it took the form of
-two great canoes, exactly equal, fastened close together and covered
-by a single central deck; and such are the seaworthiness and speed of
-these double boats, that the Polynesians voyage hundreds of miles in
-them.
-
-Similar in purpose—namely, to insure stability—are the various
-outriggers that at once characterize and distinguish among themselves
-the native craft of the South Seas. This device consists of a beam of
-the lightest obtainable wood, usually about half as long as the canoe,
-which rests upon the water parallel to and a few feet away from the
-side of the boat, and is connected with its gunwale by elastic rods or
-planks. Sometimes these are covered, or partly covered, by a light
-platform, and there are many variations in form; but the idea in all
-cases is to keep the boat from overturning.
-
-In many parts of the world logs could be obtained large enough only for
-a narrow bottom or hollowed keel, and the remainder of the boat was
-built up of planks and pieces ingeniously pegged and knit together with
-treenails, ratan, and cords made of vegetable fibers that tightened
-when wet. The Madras surf-boats are a familiar example in civilized
-waters of boats made in this way which have great elasticity, and
-out of them have developed, without much change, the swift proas of
-the Malays, and the junks of China, Korea, and Japan. One device for
-stitching these boats firmly together was the leaving of ridges on the
-inner side of the planks or pieces, through holes in which they could
-be tied to each other and to the inner framework without making a hole
-reaching the outside. This system seems to have been earlier than the
-use of treenails.
-
-[Illustration: PROA, WITH OUTRIGGER.]
-
-Of similar construction, apparently, were the boats of the Egyptians
-and other peoples about the eastern end of the Mediterranean and the
-Red Sea, which, as far back as three thousand years before Christ, at
-least, had reached the size and capabilities of true ships, making, as
-we shall presently see, extensive sea voyages. Pictures of them remain
-in the very ancient tombs, and show that the planking consisted of
-pieces about three feet square, which were laid on overlapping, like
-shingles on a roof, and fastened to the framework by wooden treenails.
-The Phenicians, and their pupils the Greeks and Romans, improved on
-these methods in various ways, at last substituting iron, copper, and
-bronze nails or bolts (which would not rust) for the wooden pegs of
-their ancestors.
-
-All of these boats and those of all western Europe (of which the best
-outside the Mediterranean were the vikings’ ships) differed in one
-essential point of construction from Oriental ships: instead of making
-the shell of the vessel, and fitting into it a framework of connected
-braces, as the Malays and Polynesians did (and yet do), they laid a
-keel, bending it up or setting into it stem- and stern-posts at the
-ends, and inserted along its sides curving upright timbers, well styled
-“ribs,” which swelled out amidships, and narrowed in forward and aft,
-making a skeleton of the shape the hull was intended to be. Finally,
-over and upon this well-braced framework were securely fastened the
-planks, which were narrow and ran lengthwise in every case except
-that of the ancient Nile boats. The Scandinavian vikings developed a
-craft of their own, one of the most interesting of the ancient ships;
-and to these northern craftsmen is traceable the principal influence
-that has shaped British (and consequently American) ship-building and
-seamanship. This early Scandinavian boat was always made of oak, sharp
-at both ends, and rather shallow, the general form being much like that
-of a modern whaleboat, with a great rounding keel—if, indeed, this
-wonderful sea-craft may not be a lineal descendant of the viking ship.
-The hewn planks were attached to the keel and to the ribs (usually
-single, naturally bent V-shaped prongs of oak) in a most ingenious and
-serviceable manner, and they were always overlapping or clinker (_i.
-e._, clencher) built. Several of these and other prehistoric boats have
-been found buried in peat-moss and in mounds in Germany, Denmark, and
-Scandinavia, and have been described by various writers.
-
-The motive power of all the early boats was found in human arms,
-wielding paddles or oars. It is said that the oldest forms of paddles
-of which we have any record among the Egyptian or Assyrian hieroglyphs
-show them to have been shaped somewhat like the arm and hand, and that
-similar paddles were to be seen a few decades ago on the canals in
-Holland. This is natural, because undoubtedly the first paddle ever
-used was the naked hand. Short paddles were soon found less powerful
-than long ones; but in order to work the latter it was necessary to
-brace them against something in the middle. Notches were therefore cut
-in the edge of the boat, or thole-pins were inserted, the paddle became
-an oar, and by and by boatmen learned the art of feathering, and so
-forth.
-
-Steering could be done of old, as now, with a turn of the rearmost
-paddle in a canoe, and as canoes enlarged, the steering-paddle was
-lengthened. As the sterns of the ancient boats were usually either
-sharp, like the prows, or else built up into an ornamental height, the
-most convenient place for the steering-oar was over the right side,
-where it was balanced in a loop of cable, or otherwise, as close to the
-after end of the boat as practicable, and then a cross-piece extended
-inboard from the handle, enabling the steersman to move it more easily
-by giving him the benefit of leverage. Such was the arrangement of
-steering-gear in all the ancient Mediterranean boats, and it is to a
-similar arrangement in the sea-going craft of our northern ancestors
-that we owe our words _stern_ and _starboard_, which originally
-meant “steering-place” and “steering-side.” The modern rudder is
-substantially the same oar, set upright, tiller and all, and hinged to
-the stern-post; in fact, the word has descended from the old Teutonic
-name for “oar,” and all gradations between steering-oar and true rudder
-may still be found.
-
-Though some romantic stories are told by the old mythologists as
-to its origin, the idea of rigging was as natural and practical in
-its development as that of hull or steering-gear. That a strong
-breeze moves a canoe, and that, if a man in a canoe holds his robe
-outstretched or a thick bush upright, the force will send him along
-without the labor of paddling, and lengthwise rather than sidewise,
-because that is the direction of least resistance, were facts quickly
-and gratefully seized upon by the earliest boatmen. To have a skin
-ready for the purpose, and to set up a pole and ropes to hold it in
-position, were easy matters; yet in this simple arrangement you have
-the first sail.
-
-But skins were too heavy and valuable for such a purpose, except in
-such limited circumstances as those of the Arctic Eskimos.
-
-Persons who spent much time on the water, therefore, like the most
-ancient Egyptians and the islanders of the Chinese and South seas, soon
-devised a way of weaving rushes or splints of bamboo into broad mats,
-and thus were able, on account of their lightness, to carry much larger
-and more effective sails, which were kept outstretched by one or more
-cross-poles or spars, and could be taken down quickly. Many such sails
-are in use to this day not only among Asiatic and African boatmen, but
-on the northwest coast of Canada. A fine example hangs above my desk as
-I write.
-
-With the discovery of how to make cloth and cordage of woolen, silken,
-hempen, and cotton fibers (and in Egypt of papyrus), came a still
-better material for ropes and sails, since cloth was so much lighter
-that a far greater extent of it could be spread than before; its
-flexibility enabled it to be handled, changed, and rolled up snugly,
-and its cheapness encouraged its use and the practice of navigation
-generally. We read of silken sails on the royal barges of medieval
-times, but they could hardly have exceeded in strength or elegance
-those of the fine Phenician ships that carried the commerce of the
-world twenty-five centuries ago. “Fine linen with broidered work from
-Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail,” exclaims
-the sacred chronicler (Ezekiel xxvii. 7). Hempen cloth, indeed, was
-preferred for sails until the present century, as is expressed in our
-word _canvas_, which is derived from the Latin name of flax; but now
-cotton has mainly superseded it.
-
-Anciently the sails were often colored, purple or vermilion being the
-badge of a monarch or an admiral. Black denoted mourning. “In some
-cases the topsail seems to have been colored, while the sail below
-was plain; and frequently a patchwork of colors was produced by using
-different stuffs.” Various inscriptions and devices were also woven or
-painted on the sails, sometimes in gold. The Venetians and Greeks do
-the same to this day, adding a gaudy feature to the lovely Levantine
-sea-scenery; and the sails of the North Sea fishermen are turned to a
-rich red and yellow by the tanning mixture in which they soak their
-canvas.
-
-[Illustration: REEFING A TOPSAIL IN A STORM.]
-
-As for the shape, all rigs seem reducible to two types—the lateen and
-the square. The former is characteristic of the eastern half of the
-world, the latter of the western half, including primitive America,
-where, so far as I know, only plain, rectangular sails were ever made
-by the Indians.
-
-[Illustration: A HONG-KONG “PULL-AWAY” BOAT.
-
-Showing method of hoisting and reefing matting sails.]
-
-There must be some good reason for a broad division like this, and
-it is found in the different conditions which eastern and western
-seamen had to meet. The lateen seems to have originated in the Indian
-Ocean, is seen wherever Arabs are, and has been taken eastward by the
-Malays as far into the South Sea Islands as their influence extended.
-It is a huge, triangular canvas extended at a steep angle by a long,
-flexible yard balanced across the mast to which it is loosely hung,
-and controlled by a sheet attached to the free corner. It is thus very
-lofty, and therefore suitable to a region of steady and usually light
-winds. This is the characteristic rig of the Arab dhow—a model that has
-come down from remote antiquity and is capable of excellent service on
-the northern and eastern coasts of Africa, where it prevails. It was
-probably in a small vessel of this kind that the Apostle Paul suffered
-shipwreck; and an outgrowth and perfection of it is the dahabiyeh
-of the Nile, now become famous as a tourists’ pleasure-boat, whose
-immensely lofty sail is precisely adapted to catch every faint breath
-that comes across the river from the deserts. Such sails are spread
-like the great pointed wings of an albatross over the narrow decks
-of the Malayan “flying proas” and other swift South Sea craft, and
-urge upon their fleet errands the xebecs, saics, feluccas, and other
-light craft of the Levant and Barbary coasts, identified with former
-piracy and modern smuggling, as well as with fishing and freighting.
-Some of these boats have two or three masts, the xebec and felucca
-being notable because of the curious forward rake of the foremast;
-and in that extremely picturesque Portuguese fishing-boat called the
-muleta there are, in addition to the big lateen, a huge free second
-sail ballooning out to leeward from the tip of the yard, and a host of
-little flying jibs forward, which somebody has well likened to a flock
-of birds hovering about the prow. Good examples of lateen-rigged boats
-may be seen in Louisiana, built and manned by the Greek, Maltese, and
-Sicilian fishermen.
-
-The difficulty of handling in rough or squally weather this long yard
-and expansive canvas makes it unsuitable for such weather as prevails
-in the western Mediterranean or on the Atlantic; and to meet these
-stormy and frequently changing conditions, and obtain a rig with which
-they could beat to windward, the earliest rough-water seamen devised
-square sails. What the rig of the ancient far-voyaging Phenician ships
-was we have no means of knowing, but the indications are that they
-carried lug sails, which appear to be the simplest and earliest of the
-“square” forms; that is, sails suspended from short cross-yards, and
-controlled by ropes (sheets) attached to their lower corners. Such at
-least were the sails of the Roman and Greek merchant and war vessels of
-the classical era, and they persist to-day in the local fishing-smacks
-of the stormy Adriatic.
-
-The true home of the square-sailed craft, however, was northern Europe,
-where the Norwegian, Dutch, and Norman coasters and fishermen of to-day
-probably represent fairly well the rigs of the bold viking boats of
-twelve or fifteen centuries ago.
-
-Of the slow development of ship-building during the middle ages we have
-little information, but in the fourteenth century we begin to hear of a
-revival in the art, as, indeed, was needful when the long voyages were
-to be undertaken which the discovery of the mariner’s compass had then
-rendered possible. In this revival the Venetians and Genoese took the
-lead, but the English were not far behind. There was a large variety
-of vessels in that day, rude though they were, and called by names we
-should hardly recognize.
-
-Though the hulls of these vessels were large and tight, their shape
-was poorly adapted for speed or for safety in bad weather. Their decks
-were built up into immensely high structures at the stern and bows,
-after the old galley model, and to form forts for soldiers. Our word
-“forecastle” reminds us of this old usage. Their masts were single
-sticks,—not divided into topmasts,—and hence, necessarily, were thick
-and heavy; and they bore upon their summits large “top-castles” where
-marines stood in battle to shoot down upon the enemy’s decks. This
-weight above, with the height of surface exposed to the wind and the
-clumsy rigging, made it impossible for them to sail safely except with
-a fair and gentle wind (they never attempted it otherwise), and they
-were required to carry an enormous quantity of ballast. There was
-so little room for anything except armament, sleeping-berths, and a
-cooking-room in the war-ships that every war fleet had to take with it
-small vessels carrying provisions; and the case was little better in
-respect to merchant vessels.
-
-The ships in which Vasco da Gama, Columbus, the Cabots, and other
-explorers did their marvelous work were no better than this. Strangely
-inefficient they seem to us, and we wonder that some of the simplest
-contrivances in rigging were not adopted centuries before they came
-into use until we remember that it was not for long, speedy voyages
-that vessels were intended previous to the sixteenth century (with
-certain exceptions in northern seas), but simply as a means of carrying
-slowly from one coast-port to another a great number of men or huge
-cargoes.
-
-However, as the known world widened and trade grew, inventions by
-private ship-owners continually improved the rigging, though it would
-be hard to find a class of men slower to change old ways for new than
-the seamen. Columbus’s “caravel” had four short masts, the forward one
-having a square lug-sail and the three after masts lateens. It was
-very gradually, indeed, that lateens were given up, and most curious
-combinations of sails were to be seen in this transition period of the
-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The old-fashioned Mediterranean
-barca, for example, had as foremast the forward-raking “trinchetto”
-of the felucca, with a huge lateen, while the mainmast bore three
-square sails and the mizzen two lugs; and in addition to this two banks
-of oars were provided! In fact, it was not until 1800 that English
-frigates substituted a spanker for the lateen-rigged mizzen.
-
-Another curiosity of rigging possessed by these solidly built,
-beautifully carved vessels (no such exterior decoration has been seen
-since as adorned the ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)
-was the quaint little spritsail-topmast. By this time the single
-heavy pole-mast had been superseded by the three built-up masts and
-topmasts, braced by stays, made accessible by rope ladders (shrouds),
-and carrying several tiers of topsails instead of only one. A bowsprit
-had been added, also, and this became almost a fourth mast, so loaded
-were it and its stays with various small sails. Its outer end bore
-this miniature spritsail-mast, with topmast, shrouds, and tiny sails
-all complete, surmounted by a pole-head, or jack-staff, upon which was
-hoisted the flag since known as the jack, and always now carried at the
-prow of any national boat or ship, even such as the shapeless monitors.
-
-But gradually, out of the experience of long voyages, the competition
-of merchants, and as an effect of improved gunnery and consequent
-changes in naval tactics, the lofty deck-structures, great tops,
-needless outworks, and odd sails, like this spritsail, were got rid of,
-and vessels were trimmed down and equalized until they became, as now,
-“ship-shape, Bristol-fashion.”
-
-The rigging of modern sailing-vessels is divided into “standing” and
-“running”; the former includes the masts, their stays, now generally
-made of wire, and such other rope-work as is not adjustable.
-
-The sails, also, may be assigned to two classes: first, those attached
-to a mast, with or without boom and gaff, or to a stay, which are
-called fore-and-aft sails because they may be ranged lengthwise of the
-ship; and, second, those suspended by their upper and lower edges to or
-between spars or “yards” swung across the mast, and known as “square”
-sails, the lowermost of which are really lugs. All the variations
-of shape seen in America, except the rare and local lateens, can be
-counted in one or the other of these classes.
-
-The styles of rig visible in American waters are not many, and are
-easily learned. Let us begin with the simplest—that having one mast.
-
-[Illustration: ANCIENT CARAVELS.
-
-Copied from old manuscripts and tapestries.]
-
-The _cat-boat_ (_i. e._, cat-rigged boat) is one having a simple
-pole-mast stepped very near the bow, and a fore-and-aft sail laced to a
-gaff and boom and managed by a sheet. This is the rig of the ordinary
-American sail-boat, which is noted for its ability in pointing up into
-the wind. In England it is known as a una-boat. Sometimes the peak
-of the sail is sustained by a little loose spar called a “sprit,”
-instead of a gaff. In the chapter on Yachting will be found further
-illustrations of these small rigs.
-
-A _sloop_ has one mast (with topmast) set well back from the stem, and
-a bowsprit. The sloop-rig consists of a fore-and-aft mainsail, spread
-by means of a boom and gaff, a gaff-topsail, a forestaysail, and one
-or more jibs. A _cutter_ is now substantially the same thing, though
-formerly somewhat distinguished. Both are derived, probably, from the
-northern lugger, and old-time pictures show queer intermediate forms,
-often having a square topsail instead of a gaff. Thus the earlier of
-the Hudson River sloops, which were not only the freight-carriers but
-the packet-boats between New York and Albany from the time the Dutch
-introduced them until steamboats took their place, had the top of the
-mainsail supported, lug-fashion, by a short yard, and carried above
-that a square topsail; but this rig was steadily modified toward the
-modern type to make it faster and safer in the sudden squalls that
-beset this hill-girt river.
-
-Of two-masted rigs, the oldest is the _brig_, which has square sails on
-both masts, just like the main and mizzen masts of a full-rigged ship.
-Then there is the _brigantine_, a slight modification of the brig,
-and the _hermaphrodite brig_, or _brig-schooner_, with fore-and-aft
-sails on the after mast. This kind of vessel has been greatly modified
-(one of its most extraordinary forms was the _ketch_), is less common
-now than formerly, and took its name, which is derived from the same
-source as “brigand,” from the fact that it was the most common rig of
-the pirates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its place was
-largely taken for small vessels by a purely American invention, and
-one of the greatest of Yankee notions—the _schooner_. The schooner
-was originally small, and had two masts; but now is often built of
-great size, with as many as five or six masts, each of which has a
-fore-and-aft rig—that is, a sloop’s mainsail and gaff-topsail on every
-mast, with forestaysail and several jibs in front, and staysails
-between. Sometimes a square sail is placed on the foretopmast, which
-makes the vessel a _topsail schooner_. The first one was built by a
-Gloucester sea-captain about 1817, and proved so satisfactory that all
-the fishing-fleet were soon rigged in that way, whence the idea has
-spread to all parts of the world.
-
-Until recently, however, vessels large enough to have three masts were
-always “square-rigged,” as _barks_, _barkentines_, or _ships_; for,
-although we have come to speak of any big vessel as a “ship,” yet in
-proper nautical language a ship is a vessel rigged in a particular way,
-and it is nothing else. In fact, in olden times they were sometimes
-very small—too small to be economical, as we now know. The “Naval
-Chronicle” for 1807 contained an account of a full-rigged ship of
-only thirty-six tons’ burden, which for one hundred and thirty years
-previous to that date had been cruising about the English coast, and
-may be doing so yet, for aught I know.
-
-[Illustration: A FIJI ISLAND OUT-RIGGED CANOE, APPROACHING A
-FULL-RIGGED SHIP HOVE-TO.]
-
-Masts have their proper names: the tallest is in the middle of the
-vessel, and is called the _mainmast_; the next tallest stands in front
-of it, and is the _foremast_; and the third is in the stern, and is
-named _mizzenmast_, because it carries the mizzen (sail). All the
-rigging, except that belonging to the bowsprit, is repeated for each
-mast, and each piece is named with reference to the mast or part of the
-mast or appropriate sail to which it belongs: as, for example, main
-shrouds, fore shrouds, mizzen shrouds, mizzen-royal, maintopsail yard,
-foretopmast studdingsail downhaul, and so on. In a proper full-rigged
-ship all the sails upon the masts, except the spanker, are square,
-and are named from the sections of the mast opposite which they hang.
-Counting from the deck to the truck, or tiptop of the mast, they are
-as follows: on the mainmast, mainsail or maincourse, maintopsail,
-maintopgallant-sail, mainroyal, and skysail; on the foremast, foresail
-or forecourse, foretopsail, foretopgallant, foreroyal, and skysail;
-on the mizzenmast, cross-jack (and behind it the spanker, mizzen, or
-driver), mizzentopsail, mizzentopgallant, mizzen-royal, and skysail.
-The bowsprit sails are the forestaysail, foretopmast staysail, jib,
-flying jib, and outer jib, or jibstaysail. Each of the stays running
-diagonally from mast to mast bears a triangular sail known by the name
-of the particular stay on which it hangs, as maintopmast staysail, and
-so on—nine in all. In addition to all this, a little sail is sometimes
-set above the skysail, and another under the bowsprit, while out
-beyond the ends of the yards are often extended light additional spars
-carrying studdingsails. In favorable weather, when the captain wishes
-to “crowd all on,” as sometimes can be done for days and weeks together
-before the trades, almost forty sails may be spread, and the ship moves
-grandly along under a swaying cloud of canvas that reaches far beyond
-her rails on each side, and towers more than one hundred feet into the
-steady air.
-
-But the cost of building, maintaining, and handling these grand
-fabrics is so great that they are steadily diminishing in numbers,
-and perhaps are destined before long to disappear altogether from the
-seas to which they have lent so much picturesqueness and romance. The
-supremacy of the schooner seems likely to prove complete. Unwilling to
-concede everything at once, many vessels are now rigged with square
-sails on the foremast and mainmast and fore-and-aft sails on the mizzen
-(a _bark_), or square sails on the foremast only, and the others
-schooner-rigged (a _barkentine_); but even these are disappearing in
-favor of the three-masted or four-masted schooner. This is due to the
-fact that the schooner rig will sail closer to the wind and gives
-as much force in proportion as the ship style, while it is far less
-expensive to build, and more quickly and easily managed, not requiring
-nearly as many men, and therefore being cheaper to run as well as
-to set up. It is for these reasons that I have called it one of the
-greatest of Yankee notions.
-
-[Illustration: A MULETA, OR PORTUGUESE LATEEN-RIGGED FISHING-BOAT.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS
-
-
-PART I—PREVIOUS TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA
-
-Wherever it may have been that man first appeared upon the earth, the
-period must certainly have been incalculably long ago, for he had time
-to spread to all parts of the habitable globe long before any sort of
-record begins. Little, if any, part of the world has yet been found
-where the evidences of man’s residence in the long-forgotten past do
-not exist. So long ago that all tradition of it is forgotten, and only
-the imperishable stone implements they used remain as traces of their
-presence, mankind had reached and settled the farthest northern and
-eastern coasts of Europe and Asia, and the southern extremities of
-Africa and India. These might have been reached by land; but similar
-traces exist in many islands which, so far as we can see, could never
-have been connected with each other or with any continent by lands
-now submerged (as perhaps has been the case in some other islands)
-since man originated. Such places, then, could have been reached and
-colonized only by means of boats, and that at an exceedingly remote
-time.
-
-Some hint of what these prehistoric navigators might have been able to
-do may be gathered from the performances that we know of in the South
-Sea, where almost every island and coral atoll that could support a
-colony has apparently been inhabited, since long before even tradition
-begins, although some of them, like the Hawaiian group, are separated
-from all others by hundreds of miles of open sea.
-
-It is exceedingly interesting and suggestive to read in a work like
-Professor Friedrich Ratzel’s “History of Mankind,” of the dispersion
-of population over the islands of the South Pacific Ocean, where a
-mixed population of black and yellow races possessed themselves of
-the whole of Oceanica long before white men had even heard of that
-part of the world. This astounding fact gains in significance when
-we remember that wide tracts of very deep ocean divide these islands,
-many of which are so small that they were found by exploring navigators
-only with difficulty. Cook and Beechey and other early voyagers note
-finding upon certain islands people who had come thither in their own
-boats over distances of six or eight hundred miles; and there are many
-instances of castaways surviving voyages of one thousand or fifteen
-hundred miles, even against the trade-winds. But these involuntary
-voyages were no longer than many others undertaken for war or trade,
-or because of famine or a mere love of wandering. Over-population of
-the limited spaces of most islands and groups led to the colonization
-of others; and it must often have been necessary to go far away to
-seek unoccupied or thinly peopled refuges. This could not have been
-done had men not been good shipwrights, not only, but careful students
-of the heavens by whose sun and moon and stars they steered, aiding
-themselves with charts made of sticks. The remotest groups, like the
-Sandwich Islands and Easter Island, were found and settled too long
-ago even for tradition to retain more than a fabulous story about it.
-“These Vikings of the Pacific,” says Ratzel, “continued to discover
-even small and remote islets. In the whole of the Pacific there is not
-one island of any size of which it was left to Europeans to demonstrate
-the habitability.” It has even been argued that the continent of
-America was peopled by Pacific Islanders, who made their way to it
-from Polynesia; but of this there is no direct evidence, and it seems
-unlikely, because the prevailing winds and currents flow from South
-America, rather than toward it, in this part of the Pacific.
-
-But leaving these dim old times when barbarous men voyaged far and wide
-over seas, and races mingled that were born on opposite sides of wide
-waters, let us note what traveling our civilized ancestors did.
-
-The evidences of ruined walls, graves, carvings, and stone tools
-show that that earliest of civilized races of which we now have any
-knowledge—the Hittites—were acquainted not only with the coasts of
-the Mediterranean Sea, but had boldly rounded the headlands of Spain,
-skirted the stormy Bay of Biscay, and settled colonies in England
-and France. Who were these Hittites? They were an Asiatic people,
-dwelling in the Taurus Mountains of the eastern part of Asia Minor,
-who increased into the most powerful nation of that part of the world
-about two thousand years before Christ, and carried on wars with the
-Egyptians, among others, until at last they were overcome by the rise
-of the empire of Assyria, north of them, about eleven hundred years
-before Christ. Doubtless they explored the African coast somewhat south
-of the Red Sea, and very likely knew the Persian Gulf and the route
-to India. My own opinion is that we are likely to give the people of
-antiquity too little credit rather than too much in the direction of a
-knowledge of geography.
-
-Meanwhile there was rising along the Mediterranean from Palestine
-northward the most able commercial race of antiquity, who styled
-themselves Canaanites, as in the Bible, but whom the Greeks called
-Phenicians, the name by which we know them best. Their capitals were
-the cities Tyre and Sidon, the ruins of which are still to be seen
-on the Syrian coast a little way south of Beirut, and the wealth and
-commercial power of which will give us some interesting paragraphs
-for a future chapter. Suffice it here to say that their rulers were
-foremost among the loosely organized “nations” between the Nile and the
-Euphrates, and that they maintained their power through a long period,
-not only by their wealth and enterprise as traders, but mainly through
-their skill and energy as navigators. As we shall see when we come to
-consider their commerce in Chapter VII, they excelled in the building
-of ships, in an understanding of how to steer long courses by the
-heavenly bodies, and in sea knowledge generally. It is well known that
-the Phenicians traded in their ships down the west coast of Africa to
-and beyond the Canary Islands, which they also visited; made repeated
-voyages to the French coast and the British Islands; and may very
-likely have gone around into the Baltic, for they knew of its amber,
-though this might have been obtained by the overland trade routes. It
-is believed that they ascertained that Africa was, in fact, a huge
-island; for it was to prove this supposition that Pharaoh Necho (or
-Naku or Neku) II, an enlightened Egyptian monarch who reigned in the
-sixth century before Christ, hired a crew of Phenician seamen to man
-an expedition whose purpose it was to circumnavigate Africa. These men
-started down the Red Sea in 611 B. C., and in 605 B. C. came sailing
-home through the Strait of Gibraltar, to the delight of their friends
-and confusion of a kingdom full of I-told-you-sos.[1] Just twenty
-centuries elapsed before any one else repeated that feat, so far as I
-know;, and no wonder it was forgotten. This same Necho II did even more
-for maritime commerce, for he attempted to complete the canal, begun
-long before his time, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea,
-and seems to have made a passage along which barges and small boats
-might be towed, which remained open for many centuries, and in part
-followed the line now covered by the Suez Canal. Earlier than that
-Darius, the Persian conqueror of Egypt, had dug a navigable canal from
-the Nile to the Red Sea; and this shows that there must have been large
-traffic in both seas at that time to justify such tasks.
-
-[Illustration: AN EARLY ROMAN BIREME.]
-
-By this time the power and prosperity of Tyre and Sidon had declined,
-and Carthage, originally a colonial city, had become the most important
-center of Phenician influence; and from this port there sailed a
-century later (perhaps about 500 B. C.) an exploring expedition under
-a Carthaginian king named Hanno, intended to study and establish trade
-with the West African coast. It was a large and powerful fleet, said
-to number sixty galleys; and that women were taken as well as men
-shows that it was intended to form settlements at suitable points,
-as, indeed, was done. The account of it has been preserved in a short
-writing called the “Periplus,” by an ancient but unknown Greek; and
-this inscription is regarded by most scholars as entirely authentic,
-since all its details conform to modern knowledge, even though it is
-impossible to identify surely the various points mentioned. It tells us
-that the terminus of Hanno’s exploration was an island beyond a gulf
-called Noti Cornu, in which he found a company of hairy women, whom
-the interpreters called _gorillas_. It was in memory of this that the
-manlike apes which a few years ago were discovered on the west coast of
-Africa received the same name; but they are not known anywhere north of
-the Kamerun Mountains, while the farthest point any critic is willing
-to believe reached by Hanno is the Bight of Benin, some distance north
-of the Kameruns. It is easy to believe that the inquiring Carthaginians
-might have heard of these apes,—or perhaps of chimpanzees, now found
-as far north as the Gambia River,—and reported actually seeing them,
-in order to add glory to their name. At any rate, this expedition
-increased largely the ancient knowledge of the sea in that direction;
-and navigators now knew the shores of the Atlantic from the Gulf of
-Guinea to the North Sea; but there the knowledge of the world seems
-to have rested for more than a dozen centuries, principally, no
-doubt, because there seemed nothing beyond, either north or south, to
-invite the merchants who then, as ever since, have been the principal
-promoters of discovery. It is only within the past century that
-voyages of discovery have been undertaken purely for the sake of the
-increase of knowledge. Previous to that the object was always either
-military conquest or the extension of trade.
-
-[Illustration: SHIP OF PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR.
-
-(About 240 B. C. Banks of oars and lug-sails.)]
-
-Attention was now turned to the eastern seas, overland routes to India
-and even to China having become well known both to conquering armies
-and to mercantile caravans. The coasts of Abyssinia, of Arabia, of the
-Persian Gulf, and of western India were settled by a semi-civilized
-people for a thousand, perhaps two thousand, years before the Christian
-era; but they were broken into many independent tribes; and their
-ships, if they had any, only crept from one harbor to another near
-by, and neither knew nor cared what lay beyond the farther headlands.
-As time went on, however, and strong kingdoms arose in Egypt, Arabia,
-Syria, and Persia, consolidating these scattered tribes into nations,
-it became necessary to learn the sea-routes between more distant ports.
-Thus it came about that while the Pharaohs still flourished, Arabic
-commerce extended regularly along the coast of Abyssinia, and doubtless
-as far southward as Zanzibar, while the Malays had probably already
-reached and colonized Madagascar. There seems no reason to doubt that
-those remarkable ruins in stone which the late Mr. Thomas Bent has
-studied at and near Zimbabwe, in Mashonaland, East Africa, are the work
-of Arabian gold-miners, made perhaps a thousand or more years ago; and
-it is pretty certain that Arabic seamen even at that date regularly
-traded as far as the island of Madagascar.
-
-The Persian Gulf has been another nursery of a seafaring people
-since long before the record of history begins; yet so slow were
-they to learn of anything outside their capes, that it was accounted
-a wonderful thing when, in the winter of 325-4 B. C., Nearchus, the
-admiral of the fleet of Alexander the Great, voyaged from the mouth of
-the Indus to the head of the Persian Gulf. Soon afterward, however,
-under the house of the Ptolemies, rulers of Egypt, fleets sailed
-regularly between Red Sea ports and India and Ceylon.
-
-But now for many long centuries the boundaries of the known world
-were not to be much enlarged (although methods of navigation were
-improved and commerce continued within the limits of Roman and Arabic
-dominion), for we know of the discovery of no new coasts until we
-begin to hear of the doings of an independent and far northern people,
-scarcely known to the civilized world, and certainly not regarded as a
-part of it.
-
-On the bleak shores of the North Sea, where the fiords and creek-mouths
-of Scandinavia gave shelter not only from foreign enemies, but from
-each other, there had grown up a seafaring race of men, of Gothic
-ancestry, who had settled on the coasts of what are now Norway, Sweden,
-and Denmark. They styled themselves Norsemen, or men of the North, and
-did not object to the title Vikings, or Fiord-men; but their enemies
-called them pirates, and with much reason, for they ravaged and ruled
-all the coasts both north and south of the Baltic, voyaging northward
-to the “land of the midnight sun,” colonizing northern France in the
-tenth century, and taking practical possession of all they pleased of
-the British Isles—Ireland and northern Scotland in particular. Here
-these Norsemen met equally fierce foes, or found congenial partners,
-as the case might be, in the Scottish and Irish seamen of that day,
-who were themselves bold freebooters and wide voyagers; and when, in
-the middle of the ninth century, the Northmen had discovered, as they
-supposed, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, a little exploration soon
-showed them that the Irish _culdees_, or priests of the Christian
-church planted in Ireland by St. Patrick, had been there before
-them—first in 725, according to the Irish chronicles of Dicuilus, who
-seems worthy of credence. Indeed, it is believed by some antiquarians
-that these Irish sea-wanderers had colonized Iceland at the same early
-age; had reached Newfoundland, and regularly resorted to its banks
-for fishing and whaling (five hundred years before Cabot); and were
-even acquainted with the coast of the North American continent, where
-traditions assert that their colonies were planted on what are now the
-shores of Virginia and the Carolinas, which they called New Ireland.
-
-These are entertaining old stories, and may have some truth in them,
-for it seems certain that the Irish reached Iceland, at least, in the
-eighth century. Icelandic history, however, begins with the visits
-of Norsemen in 850, followed by others, who, a few years later, took
-colonies there and set up an island population which before a century
-had elapsed numbered more than fifty thousand people. They had a
-republican form of government, and were quite independent of the King
-of Norway (Harold the Fair-haired, great-great-grandfather of William
-the Conqueror), from whom the earlier colonists had fled because of his
-oppression; but they kept up acquaintance with the mother-country, and
-merchants and adventurers were continually voyaging between Iceland
-and all the islands and coasts of that region, using stanch vessels
-sometimes one hundred feet in length, and eminently seaworthy; yet
-their only guides were the stars and such signs as seafaring men read
-in the water and weather about them.
-
-[Illustration: A WAR EXPEDITION OF THE VIKINGS.]
-
-It continually happened, however, that they were driven far out of
-their courses, in such a region of gales, currents, and fogs as is the
-North Atlantic. In one such adventure, in the year 876, a sea-captain
-named Gunnbjörn Ulfkragesson was driven far to the west of Iceland,
-and when he got back to port told his friends that he had seen land.
-Probably he also told them Showing build, steering-oar, and rig
-(colored lug-sail), of Scandinavian exploring ships in the North
-Atlantic.
-
-that so far as he could see there was nothing but icy mountains, of
-which they already had enough, for no one seems to have investigated
-the matter further until more than a century later, when a turbulent
-viking of the rebellious house of Erik, called Erik the Red, was
-banished from Norway and fled to Iceland with his followers. He was
-soon convicted there also of manslaughter in a neighborhood quarrel,
-and again condemned to banishment. Iceland wanted to get rid of him and
-his brawlers, and Europe would not let him return. Whither should he go?
-
-Then his thoughts turned toward the strange land in the west that
-tradition said Gunnbjörn had sighted. It is believed by the most
-careful students that Gunnbjörn’s “rocks” were volcanic islets, which
-have now disappeared, and are represented only by certain shoals;
-but it would not be incredible that he had caught a glimpse of the
-Greenland coast itself.
-
-At any rate, Erik had little hesitation in starting out to rediscover
-them. Why should he? Those rough-riders of the sea were used to voyages
-of equal length. It is about 200 miles from the Norwegian coast at
-Bergen to the Shetland Islands; 200 miles from the Shetlands, or 225
-from the Hebrides, to the Faroes; and 275 miles thence to the nearest
-coast of Iceland,—reckoning all in straight lines, shorter than any
-ship could actually follow.
-
-If his viking boat and viking crew could span those stretches of sea
-unguided, what hindered his crossing the little further space whose
-tempests had no terrors for this wild sea-king? In that unpossessed
-land, could he find it, he might be free to riot at his will (but one
-cannot help thinking there was more in the man than that!); and if he
-could open to his people a new country, what wealth and power might not
-come with it to him, for the humbling of his rivals at the court of
-Norway.
-
-So Red Erik sailed away to the west in 984, and two years later
-returned to Iceland and reported that he had met first a far-extending
-icy coast, along whose front he had sailed southward until he could
-turn to the west and then northward, thus rounding its narrow southern
-extremity (Cape Farewell); and there he had found a habitable region,
-which he called Greenland, in order, as he said, to attract settlers
-by a pleasant name. Thus this wicked old Norseman was the first of
-American “real-estate boomers.”
-
-Attracted by his story, a band of adventurers went back with him in
-986, and established a settlement near the site of the present Danish
-town Julianshaab, just inside the cape, on an inlet that they named
-Eriksfiord.
-
-Among these emigrants was one named Herjulf, whose son Bjarne[2] was a
-merchant captain who owned his own ship, and was then absent in Norway.
-Returning to Iceland shortly after Erik’s departure, he concluded at
-once to follow his father, and, with a willing crew and still loaded
-ship, set sail for the west. But incessant bad weather drove them they
-knew not whither during many days. At last the wind fell, the sun shone
-out, and they saw land; but its appearance did not agree with the
-description of Greenland, and knowing they were too far south, Bjarne
-turned north, and kept on, occasionally sighting the coast, until
-finally he reached Eriksfiord in safety. No one knows what headlands
-he looked upon; but if the Icelandic versified chronicles called sagas
-may be believed,—and the wisest students of history put faith in
-them,—he was the first European to see America of whom we have definite
-knowledge.
-
-Several years passed by, however, before any one tried to profit by
-this accident and seek the lands that had been seen southward. Then
-Leif, the eldest son of old Red Erik, resolved to do so. He had talked
-with Bjarne and his men until he knew all the details of their story,
-and then he bought the same good old ship, and enlisted a crew of
-thirty-five men. This happened in Norway, where Leif then was, and it
-is said by some that the king aided and authorized the expedition. At
-any rate, after a public farewell they sailed away, and seem to have
-gone straight across the ocean; but whether they did this, or sailed
-by way of Iceland and Greenland, they easily found the unknown coasts
-Bjarne had described, and landed in Helluland, Markland, and Vinland,
-in the last of which they built huts and spent the winter of the year
-1000.
-
-The identification of these places has caused much discussion. That
-“Helluland” was Newfoundland and “Markland” Nova Scotia seems tolerably
-certain; but historians are not agreed as to where that winter was
-spent in “Vinland,” so called (meaning “Wineland”) because a German
-member of the crew gathered grapes there, from which wine could be
-made. When, in 1602, Gosnold discovered a fruitful island south of Cape
-Cod, he named it Martha’s Vineyard, believing that he had found the
-place.
-
-When Leif reached Greenland again, the next spring, every one was
-vastly interested in his discoveries, and emigrants from Greenland,
-Iceland, and even from Europe went out to colonize the new lands; but
-the attempts, though spasmodically continued for a long time, seem
-never to have been really successful, so that no undisputed trace of
-the presence of these sea-wanderers on the mainland of North America
-is known to exist. That they knew the coast fairly well from Disco
-Island (70° N. lat.) southward to Virginia, is generally believed;
-but where Leif Erikson spent that first winter, or where the Vinland
-settlement of subsequent times was, is thus far a matter of conjecture.
-Some students of the sagas place it in New York harbor, others in
-Narragansett or Buzzard’s bay, near Boston, or in Nova Scotia. Formerly
-the general belief was that Newport, R. I., or the shore above there,
-was surely the site; but this was based, first, on the supposed
-European inscriptions on a rock in the Somerset River, at Dighton,
-just above Fall River, which were in reality only Indian markings;
-and, second, upon the “old round tower” at Newport, which few persons
-now believe was built prior to the coming of the English colonists
-with Roger Williams. The late Professor E. H. Horsford believed that
-he had found the site of the principal Norse settlement of the tenth
-century, called Norumbega, at Watertown, on the Charles River, a few
-miles west of Boston; and he made an argument from old maps, etc., to
-support his assertion that the ancient river-walls, etc., there were
-really the remains of a town; but historians generally do not attach
-any importance to Professor Horsford’s theory.
-
-Perhaps we shall never know where this “Vinland” was that Leif
-discovered, and where the queenly Gudrid dwelt and her son Schnorr—the
-first white child in America—was born; nor is it of much consequence
-that we should, for the settlements were few and transitory. That they
-existed, however, and that the shores of Canada and New England were
-occasionally visited from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries by
-Norsemen, cannot be gainsaid. That the Greenlanders did not all migrate
-to the warmer, well-timbered, and fruitful region in the south was
-probably due to the fact that it was so remote from their kindred, and
-so open to attack by the native red men, whom they called _skrellings_.
-
-[Illustration: A VIKING GALLEY.]
-
-Over the long but slow history of these American settlements of
-the Northmen we need not linger. Although Vinland seems to have
-been abandoned within a few decades, the Greenland settlements were
-maintained. A republican government was organized; Christianity was
-introduced, and remains of their stone churches and Augustinian
-monasteries have been identified. By the end of the fifteenth century,
-however, these colonies had completely disappeared, worn out in
-the hopeless struggle against climate and the savage Eskimos, but
-exterminated, at last, perhaps, by the Black Death—for the great plague
-which almost depopulated Europe in the fourteenth century seems to have
-reached even the desolate shores of Greenland, and to have consumed the
-last of these remote people, causing them to be utterly forgotten.
-
-A more definite account of pre-Columbian North America than that of
-the sagas and other traditions of the Vinlanders, and one accepted as
-true by Mr. Major of the English Hakluyt Society and other competent
-geographical critics, is that of the voyages and reports of the
-brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno. These men belonged to a family
-distinguished in Venice; and toward the close of the fourteenth century
-they separately or together made many voyages in the North Atlantic,
-going far beyond any previous navigators of which they knew. They wrote
-letters home containing an account of these, but little publication was
-given to them, and they were forgotten until the revival of interest in
-geography following the early discoveries of Columbus. The documents
-possessed by the Zeno family were then made the basis of a pamphlet
-by a grand-nephew reciting what his ancestor had done, long before
-the time of Columbus. The most interesting thing in it is an account
-of how, about 1390, Nicolò Zeno fitted out a ship at the Faroes, went
-over to Greenland and there learned of an island which was called
-Estotiland, and which we know as Newfoundland. Not very far away to the
-southwest of it, he says, was the country of Drogeo, which fishermen
-whom he saw had visited. They claimed to have “discovered” none of
-these places, but spoke of them as formerly well known, although then
-little frequented by Europeans.
-
-As to Drogeo,—which he speaks of as if it were the mainland,—that
-was still occasionally resorted to for fishing; and he relates the
-adventures of a white man who had been captured by the mainland savages
-a few years previously, and adopted by them on account of his knowledge
-of how to fish with a net, and to do other useful things. Such a
-course would be very characteristic of the aborigines of eastern North
-America, as we have since learned to know; and it is also natural that
-he should have been fought for by rival chiefs, as Zeno says happened
-to this man, who, by capture and exchange, or of his own motion,
-traveled about and saw much of the people of this “country” Drogeo. At
-any rate, the information given by Zeno tallies remarkably well with
-the truth about primitive North America and its inhabitants. “They have
-no kind of metal,” reported this wandering refugee, who finally drifted
-back to the coast, and was able to make his escape to a fishing-boat.
-Now the one really remarkable and distinctive fact about the North
-Americans was just this,—that with a considerable advance in other
-directions, they had never learned to fuse and forge or otherwise
-utilize iron or other metals, save a little metallic copper and silver
-in the Great Lakes region. But listen to the rest of his brief report:
-
-  They live by hunting, and carry lances of wood sharpened at the
-  point. They have bows, the strings of which are made of beasts’
-  skins. They are very fierce, and have deadly fights amongst each
-  other, and eat one another’s flesh [as was true, to a limited
-  ceremonial extent, after battles]. They have chieftains and certain
-  laws among themselves, but differing in the different tribes. The
-  farther you go southwestward, however, the more refinement you meet
-  with, because the climate is more temperate, and, accordingly, there
-  [_i. e._, in Mexico] they have cities and temples dedicated to their
-  idols, in which they sacrifice men and afterwards eat them. In those
-  parts they have some knowledge of gold and silver.
-
-Now, whether all this was the observation of a single rude sailor,
-or, as is more likely, summarizes what Zeno was able to learn from
-all sources at his command regarding the new western mainland and its
-people, it is correct and forcible. Had young Nicolò the editor, a
-century afterward, tried to invent something of the kind, he would
-surely have made his invention marvelous, for that was an age of fable
-and bombast. On the contrary, this is a simple and accurate statement
-of what we now know were the facts. Nor did he have any means of
-knowing anything more of the case than his family archives revealed,
-since he wrote and published this account of his uncle’s voyages only a
-few years after the first return of Columbus, and before any writer had
-visited the northern American coasts, or had learned the habits of the
-natives. I can but believe, therefore, that the report was made in good
-faith, and records simply what the Zeni did and saw and heard; and that
-these bold Venetian navigators knew more about North America, at least,
-before the end of the fourteenth century than Columbus had learned by
-the end of the fifteenth.
-
-I have run ahead of my story, but I wanted to show how little
-impression these northern investigations and occupation of a new
-continent had made upon the Mediterranean “world,” which seems rarely
-to have heard of them, much less to have profited by the information,
-for more than four hundred years, in spite of the fact that there was
-constant communication between the Normans and British, at least, and
-the Mediterranean peoples.
-
-Let us now go back to those southern countries and see what they had
-been doing toward maritime exploration during these thousand years
-and more when the Scandinavians were so busy in the north. It was
-principally perfecting the knowledge of the world their fathers knew.
-From the very first men had tried to make maps, and succeeded fairly
-well for small spaces; but to make a map of the whole world was a task
-that defied human knowledge for many centuries. After Aristotle’s time
-all men of education understood that the world was a sphere; and about
-150 B. C. Hipparchus, borrowing an idea from the Babylonians, taught
-the Greeks that the way to place their towns and mountains and rivers
-and the outlines of the coast correctly upon a model of the world, was
-to determine their position by observations of the heavenly bodies.
-Thus the ideas of latitude and longitude originated. He could not apply
-his method practically very far, because there were few or no accurate
-astronomical observations away from a few cities in Egypt and Greece;
-but two hundred and fifty years later Ptolemy, a learned mathematician
-of Alexandria, gathered all the facts obtainable, and made an attempt
-which bore a rude resemblance to the truth and served as the best and
-almost the only account of the world for several hundred years. Ptolemy
-flourished about 150 A. D. His book describes Asia as far east as the
-Malayan peninsula, Africa south to Zanzibar and the Gulf of Guinea,
-and shows a knowledge of Europe as far north as the Shetland Islands
-(Ultima Thule) and Denmark; the original work seems to have contained
-no maps, but these were added to it about 500 A. D. by another
-mathematician named Agathodæmon. It is called the Almagest.
-
-Nothing of value was added to this during the long stagnant period of
-the world called the middle ages, when the love of learning declined
-and men fell back into the old traditions, even to the extent of being
-taught by their priests that it was a sin to believe that the world
-was round. In those times the Arabs of Bagdad nourished knowledge more
-than any one else, but even they did little for geography. Finally the
-people of Europe began to wake up and look at things for themselves,
-instead of tamely accepting whatever the Pope of Rome or somebody else
-told them, and going and coming as he directed, regardless of whether
-it was for their interest to do so or not. One of the first and one of
-the most important influences of this revival in a desire for learning
-and the means for larger activity among men was the sudden extension of
-navigation; and this could not have come about, nor amounted to much,
-had the mariner’s compass not been invented.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  “Off, thou Norseland Terror, clouding
-      Hellas with the jealous wraith
-
-  Which, the gods of old enshrouding,
-      Froze their hearts, the poet saith!”
-]
-
-Nothing is more obscure than the history of this instrument. The
-Chinese have certainly known, from a remote antiquity, that a
-magnetized needle, permitted to move freely, would turn north and
-south; but they seem to have profited as little by it as by so many
-other useful things that, long afterward, in the hands of the more
-energetic men of the West, contributed so largely to the progress of
-civilization. They were accustomed to poise a sliver of magnetized
-steel upon a bit of cork and set it afloat in a bowl of water. One end
-was marked, but this, with characteristic Chinese perversity, was the
-one pointing toward the south, not toward the north, as with us. This
-rude and simple arrangement is still in use among the Koreans—or was
-until recently. With such a contrivance and little, it any, knowledge
-of the variation of the needle, the Chinese of a thousand years ago
-made longer voyages than they have done in more modern times, trading
-not only with India, but sailing regularly as early at least as the
-ninth century to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
-
-There is no direct evidence, but it seems incontestable, that it was
-from these eastern mariners that the Arabs received the compass, and
-gradually brought it into use in their home waters, where it became
-well known to the crusaders and other sea-going travelers of the middle
-ages. Little reliance could be placed upon it, however, until the
-sixteenth century, when the need for something trustworthy for long
-voyages made men turn their attention to the study and betterment of it.
-
-Toward the end of the fourteenth century, as I have said, Europe was
-beginning to recover from the terrible visitations of the plague, and
-to wake from its lethargy and to look abroad; and various influences
-were at work to promote exploration by sea and land—and what a grand
-field for study there was!
-
-At this time nearly all the commerce of Europe, mainly in Italian
-hands, was with India and China. The overland route was long, perilous,
-and expensive, and that across the Arabian Gulf hardly less so. At
-best, such traffic was slow and limited, and the first need of the
-reviving world was the discovery of some straighter and quicker road
-to the East. In this quest Portugal came forward under the brilliant
-leadership of Dom Henrique (Prince Henry), styled “the Navigator,” who
-was the younger son of King João (or John) I, and half an Englishman,
-since his mother was Philippa of Lancaster. It was Prince Henry’s
-ambition to extend geographical discovery and improve seamanship, and
-he enlisted the help of the best navigators obtainable, regardless of
-nationality. In order to observe the heavens to better advantage, and
-also to study the tides and other nautical phenomena, he established an
-observatory on the bleak headland of Cape Sagres, where he willingly
-spent a large portion of his time for the sake of science. Navigation
-was sorely in need of such help. Except that they had rude compasses,
-of whose laws of variation, etc., they were ignorant, the seamen
-of that day were little, if any, better equipped than were those
-who sailed the “ships of Tarshish” a thousand years before that.
-Astronomers had supplied them with rough tables of the declination of
-the sun, pole-star, etc., by which, with the help of a cross-staff,—a
-simple instrument for ascertaining angles,—they might make a guess at
-the latitude. Longitude was found only by observations of eclipses of
-the moon, and noting the difference between the time when it was due
-at home, according to the almanac, and the local time of its actual
-coming; but at sea the “observations” were little better than guessing.
-
-Chart-making was an important branch of study at Sagres. So few and
-rare were sea-maps then that one was never seen in England until 1489.
-To the collection of information in this direction, and the improvement
-of nautical methods, Prince Henry and his aids applied themselves most
-diligently; but he died before much had been accomplished. Nautical
-studies went on, however, under the next king, John II, for whom Martin
-of Bohemia, the foremost astronomer of his time, devised a form of the
-astrolabe for use on shipboard, increasing accuracy in finding latitude.
-
-It was with no better instruments than these (and sand-glasses in
-place of chronometers) as guides over chartless and unsounded seas
-that the way was found to India and to America, and the globe was
-circumnavigated; and that the same thing might be done again is shown
-by the fact that only last year (1897) a vessel, which had barely
-escaped destruction in a storm and lost all her instruments in the
-mid-Pacific, was brought safely into San Francisco by observation of
-the stars and “dead-reckoning” alone.
-
-But Prince Henry (for I have run ahead of my story again) was not
-content to study and teach on land alone. He was fired with the ardor
-of discovery and conquest likely to augment Portugal’s wealth and
-influence in the East. Expedition after expedition was sent southward,
-and in 1435 Henry’s ships finally passed Cape Bojador. Great was the
-wonder and rejoicing thereat, for it had always been taught by the
-monks that this cape was the end of the earth; but it was not until
-1462 that the Cape Verd Islands and Sierra Leone were reached. Prince
-Henry had been dead since 1460, but the influence of his wise and
-untiring enthusiasm and work lived on, and inspired the king and people
-of Portugal to renewed efforts at solving that riddle of Africa that
-perhaps the Egyptian sphinx was meant to typify. By 1469 trade had been
-opened with the Gold Coast, and a few years later the mouth of the
-Congo was found.
-
-These advances showed that there was nothing unnatural or fearful in
-the southern latitudes, as sailors had been taught to believe from
-time immemorial,—a superstitious dread which the old chart-makers long
-sustained by their habit of filling the empty sea-spaces on their maps
-with fearsome and wondrous monsters,—and therefore, in 1486, King John
-II sent Bartholomew Dias in two sail-boats—pinnaces of fifty tons
-each—with orders to go as far as he could; and this bold captain,
-passing the last known headland of the Guinea coast, sailed on and on,
-tracing the West African coast, and landing here and there to examine
-the swampy shores, to get fresh water, and to hoist the castellated
-banner of Portugal in token of possession before the wondering eyes of
-naked negroes. At length he was blown and buffeted for days and days in
-heavy storms, and at their close found himself far to the eastward of
-his former longitude, whereupon he fought his way on and sighted land
-which he rightly determined must be the southern extremity of Africa.
-This was in 1487. Returning to Lisbon toward Christmas of that year, he
-reported his experiences, and dwelling especially upon the rough time
-he had had in the south, proposed to style the point of the continent
-Cape of all the Storms; but King John, foreseeing great things to
-follow for his country, said, “No; we will call it the Cape of Good
-Hope”; and so it remains to this day—but all the storms remain about
-it, too!
-
-[Illustration: PORTION OF A FIFTEENTH CENTURY SEA-CHART, BY TOSCANELLI.
-
-Copied by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., from Justin
-Winsor’s “Narrative and Critical History of America.”]
-
-Now for some years previous to this time the monarchs of western
-Europe were much exercised over rumors of the existence somewhere
-in the Orient of an all-powerful and generally marvelous potentate
-styled (by them) Prester John, and reputed to be a conqueror of
-Asiatic, or perhaps African, infidels who later had become cut off
-from Christendom. The whole affair was a myth, probably arising from
-an indistinct knowledge of Abyssinia, whose negus afterward borrowed
-the title; but before this was realized popes and various “Catholic
-majesties” had sent embassies in search of Prester John’s court, some
-of which incidentally gained valuable information. Among the latter
-was Pedro Covilho, an emissary of Portugal, who, having failed to find
-Prester John in western India or Persia, made his way back to Egypt and
-Abyssinia, whence he sent home in 1486 or 1487 a report of progress
-that told John II some surprising news of the advancement of the Arabs
-of that part of the world in the sciences, and especially in those
-belonging to geography and navigation.
-
-Covilho’s messenger was a Portuguese Jew, Rabbi Joseph of Lamego, who
-carried voluminous letters, one of which showed that Arabic mariners
-were then familiar with the whole length of the east coast of Africa,
-including Madagascar, and were perfectly well aware where it terminated
-at the south, and that there was no obstacle to passing around to the
-western side of the continent; and just at this interesting juncture
-Dias came sailing back in his pinnace to say that it was all true, for
-he had seen it.
-
-Thus the sea-road was open to India and Cathay, and Portugal was eager
-to take advantage of it. She was then one of the leading powers of
-Europe, and the foremost one in colonial and commercial enterprise,
-striving to wrest from Genoa and Venice the supremacy in trade that
-they had so long enjoyed. Nevertheless almost ten years elapsed
-before the next expedition was sent southward to confirm Portugal’s
-possessions, and establish commerce with the Orient. John II had died,
-and Emmanuel the Fortunate reigned in his stead—a reign that has been
-called the heroic period of the nation’s history; and it must not be
-forgotten that “Little Portugal” was then so mighty that a year or so
-previously (May 4, 1493) the Pope (Alexander VI) had issued a bull in
-which he had divided, with intended equality, all undiscovered parts of
-the earth between Spain and Portugal, the former being given everything
-to the west, while to Portugal were reserved all future rights east of
-a certain north-and-south line.
-
-The line of separation designated was the meridian of no variation of
-the compass-needle. The existence of such a line had been discovered
-by the same Christopher Columbus who was to thrill the world a few
-years later; but he did not know, what only experience developed, that
-this meridian was changeable, swinging many degrees east and then
-returning west in the course of two or three centuries. At that time
-the line seemed fixed some three hundred miles west of the Azores, and
-philosophers accounted for it later by a theory that it lay in the
-middle of the Atlantic because there it was subject to an equality
-of attraction toward both continents which held it steady. This was
-not true, but it was better than the less learned but more popular
-explanation of the magnetism of the compass—namely, that it was “an
-effluvium from the root of the tail of the Little Bear.” A year later,
-however (June 7, 1494), the treaty of Tordesillas, between Spain and
-Portugal, declared that the line of demarcation should be the meridian
-370 leagues west of the Cape Verd Islands, or as nearly as possible
-in the center of the Atlantic. The supposition that there might be
-valuable lands within, that is, east of, that limit, inspired several
-of Portugal’s subsequent searchers.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY HENRY B. SNELL.
-
-“THE SEA-ROAD TO INDIA AND CATHAY.”]
-
-In 1497 King Emmanuel’s expedition was ready to sail—the largest and
-best equipped, probably, that had ever been sent out by any government,
-and its commander was Vasco da Gama, a young naval officer of renown.
-His fleet consisted of four vessels,—small caravels, of course, one
-of which was commanded by Dias,—and left the Tagus, after ceremonious
-farewells, in July. Da Gama stopped at various places, but reached
-and safely rounded the stormy cape in November. He had with him the
-information (and some say an Arabic map) sent home by Covilho, but his
-business was not to verify this, but to reach India and establish new
-Portuguese possessions. Why, then, did he not strike straight across
-from Cape Agulhas, as East Indiamen have done ever since? For the good
-reason that he had no guide, no means of finding his way across the
-southern ocean, where all the stars were strange; for sun observations
-for latitude were then unknown to European navigators, and rarely used
-on land. Instead of this, he was obliged to turn northward and skirt
-the coast for a thousand miles, stopping here and there, until he had
-passed far enough north of the equator to bring above the horizon the
-familiar home stars, for which he had “tables.”
-
-At last, from the Arab port of Melindi, near Mombasa, he turned east
-and sailed straight away to India, where he anchored before Calicut,
-then the most important port of southern India, on May 20. Returning
-the next year with ships richly laden, he was received with public
-rejoicings and given high honors; and he greatly astonished his
-friends of the navy by telling them that the Arabs used the compass,
-sea-charts, quadrants, and “had divers maritime mysteries not short of
-the Portugals.”
-
-Da Gama lived many years, and sailed often to India and China after
-that; but chiefly on political expeditions, in which he disgraced his
-otherwise great name by inexcusable rapine and cruelty.
-
-Meanwhile some exploration had been done toward the far north, as we
-shall see in the next chapter; and so the fifteenth century ended, with
-Europe understood as far as Nova Zembla, Africa circumnavigated, and
-the coasts of India, Malaya, southern China, and the larger Malayan
-islands fairly familiar to geographers. This is much, and yet it leaves
-unmentioned the greatest fact of all—the work of that grand, sad
-character, Christopher Columbus, upon whose grave near Seville has been
-written:
-
-  HE GAVE A NEW WORLD TO SPAIN.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  ENGRAVED BY E. H. DEL’ORME.
-
-THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
-
-“There, beyond the Cape of Storms, Where the breaker’s voice of thunder
-Roars when ships are rent asunder, Through a fog of ghostly forms
-
-“Men catch glimpses of the sail, Ages old, and rent and hoary, Of that
-quaint old ship of story, And cry, ‘Vanderdecken, hail!’”]
-
-[Illustration: THE ROCK IN THE SEA.]
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] This is related by the Greek historian Herodotus, and has often
-been denied, especially by the older writers; but the “Encyclopædia
-Britannica” gives it credence, and tells us that the latest and best
-critic of the geography of Herodotus, Major Rennel, maintains the
-possibility of such a voyage, and believes it was made. He argues that
-the construction of their ships, with flat bottoms and low masts,
-enabled these hardy voyagers to keep close to the land, and to enter
-all the rivers and harbors for food and water. I think, therefore, that
-we may believe that Herodotus recorded what really happened, even if we
-reject some details.
-
-[2] This is not a Norse, but an Irish name, familiar to us as _Barney_.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV
-
-(_Continued_)
-
-EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS
-
-
-PART II—FROM COLUMBUS TO COOK
-
-Why to Spain? It is an “oft-told tale,” and the merest reminder is all
-that is needed here. Columbus was a young seafaring man, born at Genoa
-about 1434, and ambitious to become a master of his profession, and
-especially to acquire great wealth. He traveled to Venice, Barcelona,
-and other cities where learning was to be gained, and became thoroughly
-acquainted with all the astronomical and geographical science of the
-time, and especially proficient in the art of cartography. Attracted by
-the naval activity in Portugal under that indefatigable Prince Henry,
-Columbus went to Lisbon about 1454, and endeavored to find a leading
-place in the sea-work that country was doing. But Portugal’s eyes were
-so blinded by the glamour of Africa and the East Indies that she had
-no time to follow the gaze of this young and ardent Genoese captain
-whose eyes were turned steadily toward the west, where, more and more
-insistently, he urged that a sea-track, straight as a line of latitude
-marked on a globe, lay open to the Indies and the coasts of Cathay. To
-prove this true would be not only a glorious exploit for any man, but
-an achievement of untold advantage to the nation under whose flag he
-sailed.
-
-[Illustration: PORTRAIT-STATUE OF COLUMBUS IN MADRID.]
-
-Just how this conviction arose in the mind of Columbus we do not know.
-It was probably first a purely scientific conclusion from the facts of
-astronomy and geography that he had learned, encouraged by romantic
-traditions of western “Isles of the Blest.” A few scientific men agreed
-with him, but the great influence of the Church of Rome condemned such
-notions as opposed to the Bible and revealed religion; and the mass of
-the people, ignorant and superstitious, looked upon them as foolish,
-and laughed at Columbus as a
-
-
-dreamer or worse. Between his danger of arrest and death as a heretic
-on the one hand, and imprisonment as a lunatic on the other, the man
-of science in those days had a hard time. Columbus therefore sought
-far and wide for evidence to support his theories and render them
-acceptable. How much he learned—what, in the way of facts, he actually
-knew—it is hard to say. Having fallen in love with a Portuguese lady of
-good family, he married and apparently settled in Portugal as his home,
-but continued his voyaging. He knew the Mediterranean from end to end.
-He made several voyages to the Guinea coast, and dwelt for a time at El
-Mina, then newly founded, satisfying himself of the foolishness of the
-common assertion that men could not live “under the equinoctial”—that
-is, near the equator. He went north to and beyond Iceland, and
-acquainted himself with those waters, and thus convinced himself that
-the ocean was everywhere navigable, and subject to uniform laws of
-tides, weather, etc. His mind was cleared more and more of the mists of
-fable and superstition, and all he learned brought into clearer view
-the truth of science as a guide. He devoted more and more attention to
-improving the means of finding the true position of a vessel at sea,
-and of keeping a true course by the compass, which he continually
-studied; and it was he who first discovered that some leagues west of
-the Azores lay the meridian of no variation—a meridian that has now
-moved eastward until it lies near London. Everywhere he interrogated
-explorers, discussed navigation with experienced captains, and sought
-the aid of new maps, improved instruments, and advancing knowledge; and
-yet mixed with all seem to have been a childlike vanity, credulity, and
-superstition, hard to reconcile with his courage and acumen.
-
-How much actual evidence he had of the existence of lands below the
-Atlantic horizon unknown to his countrymen can never probably be
-satisfactorily answered. The latest critical biographer of Columbus,
-the great Spanish liberal statesman Emilio Castelar, considers that
-he was led to his discoveries by little, if anything, outside of
-pure reasoning upon the rotundity of the earth and other scientific
-data, and dismisses as fables or things unknown to Columbus all
-the Scandinavian discoveries of Greenland and the rest, and other
-stories of men who, it is said, had already seen the transatlantic
-world he sought. We are told that he learned of woods and canes like
-none that grew in Africa, of strange carvings, and even of the dead
-bodies of men, resembling those of the far East, being cast upon the
-shores of Africa and the islands near it, especially the Azores. It
-seems impossible that when he was in Iceland and the other northern
-regions, a man of his inquiring mind should not have learned something
-of Greenland and the continental shores beyond, especially when one
-remembers that for centuries previous Catholic missionaries had been
-reporting progress to Rome from that distant but real field of labor.
-It is quite likely that some knowledge of these facts, which must
-have been known to the professors of the universities of Pavia and
-Barcelona, where Columbus studied, and to other intelligent men of
-Italy and Spain with whom he came in contact, had caused Columbus to go
-to the north, for we know of no other errand. Perhaps he had heard of
-the Zeni.
-
-[Illustration: ships of columbus]
-
-Especially to be noted is the allegation that Columbus possessed
-information as to the experience of a Frenchman named Jean Cousin,—a
-Dieppe sea-captain, who, it is asserted, discovered South America
-and the Amazon River in 1488. This claim has been lately reviewed
-(“Fortnightly Review,” January, 1894) by Captain Gambier of the British
-navy, and he decides that it is good; and that it was because Cousin’s
-first mate was one of the Pinçons that that firm was willing to assist
-Columbus, as a good investment.
-
-Whatever he knew or did not know, and whatever may have been the
-difficulties in his way, Columbus spent many weary years in fruitless
-efforts to interest some government in his schemes. How finally he won
-Spain to his support, secured the aid of the Pinçons, merchant princes
-of Palos, and sailed from that port on August 3, 1492,—and it was
-Friday!—are details that need not be repeated. Equally well remembered
-are the story of his daring onward voyage, and of the glorious outcome
-when, on October 12, land was seen,—a new world found.
-
-Expedition after expedition followed one another from Spain to the
-newly found possessions, some conducted by the earlier companions of
-Columbus, and all filled with adventurers who cared for nothing but
-plunder. One of these, led by an officer named Ojeda, reached the coast
-of Guiana in 1499, and coasted along the north shore of South America
-as far, probably, as Maracaibo. This was the first of the Spanish
-expeditions actually to set foot upon the mainland; and it would
-not have been mentioned out of its place (since Cabot, as we shall
-presently see, had landed on the continent nearly two years before) but
-for the fact that one of its members was that Amerigo Vespucci whose
-fortune it was to have his name attached to the continent.
-
-Amerigo Vespucci (or Vespusze, as Columbus spells it) was a Florentine
-engaged in the shipping business who was attracted to Spain by the
-maritime activity there, and became interested in equipping the
-second flotilla of Columbus and in other similar enterprises for the
-government. The wealth and influence thus gained and his general
-abilities led him to join that expedition of Ojeda in 1499, and
-during the next four years he made three other voyages to Brazil, in
-which the bay of Rio Janeiro was entered (New Year’s day, 1501), and
-an exploration southward extended probably as far as South Georgia
-(Islands). Upon his return from this last voyage, in 1505, he publicly
-asserted that he had visited, in 1497, the coast of what is now the
-southern United States. It has lately been shown by Spanish records,
-however, that at that date he was busy in the government dockyards
-in Spain; therefore his assertion was false. It served, however, to
-deceive a forgetful public, and to procure for its author the coveted
-glory of being the first “discoverer” of the “New World,” as he first
-called it (though there is no evidence that he understood it to be a
-continent), and hence the one entitled to give it his name.
-
-This bold claim achieved its purpose. The oldest known map of the whole
-world, dated A. D. 1500, said to have been drawn by the great artist
-Leonardo da Vinci, from data furnished by Juan de la Cosa, and hence
-known to historians as the “De la Cosa Mappimundi” (it is preserved
-in Madrid), bears the name “America” across the new countries for the
-first known time; but Juan de la Cosa was with Ojeda and Vespucci on
-the expedition of 1499, and doubtless Vespucci managed the naming.
-In 1507, only a year after the death of Columbus, there appeared in
-France the “Cosmographie Introductio” of Waldseemüller (also called
-Hylacomylus), which was regarded as the most complete and authentic
-geography of its time; and here the name of _America_ was boldly
-written across “a fourth part of the world, since Amerigo found it.”
-The name (a Latin derivative) was novel, easy to pronounce, no one knew
-or cared as to the right of it, and so it stood.
-
-[Illustration: THE “SANTA MARIA”—THE FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS’ FLEET.]
-
-A few lines more as to the Spanish and Portuguese navigators in these
-waters, and then we shall have done with them for the present. In
-1499 one of the Pinçons sailed from Spain straight to the Amazon, as
-has been mentioned, avoiding the West Indies, as if he knew precisely
-whither he was bound, and reached there in January of 1500. A few
-months later a large Portuguese expedition under Pedro Cabral, starting
-for India around the cape, was blown so far to the west that it ran
-against Brazil. Everybody was hitting upon untrodden shores in those
-inspiring days, and Cabral promptly took possession for his king.
-As this shore was outside (east of) the hemisphere assigned by the
-Pope to the Spanish, the Portuguese kept it for 389 years, in spite
-of Pinçon’s priority. In 1508 Ojeda obtained the government of the
-northern coast of South America, and Nicuesa of the region north of the
-Gulf of Darien; and with the arrival of these adventurers in New Spain
-began that era of rapine and horror which will forever disgrace the
-Spanish name. The rapacious governors and their wild crews quarreled
-and fought with each other as well as with the downtrodden natives,
-and exploration was carried on by piracy. A learned man, Martin
-Enciso, went out to take command in 1510, but he was deposed by his
-soldiers the next year and sent back to Europe, where he made the
-first book printed in Spanish (1519) describing America. His place was
-taken by Vasco Nuñez Balboa, who entered upon a career of exploration
-and peaceful conquest, generally conciliating the Indians, who told
-him of another sea not far to the west, and on September 25, 1513,
-guided him to the summit of a hill near Panama, whence he, first of
-Europeans, gazed upon the Pacific. Who can imagine the emotions of such
-a sight!—for it told the Spaniards that this land was not the eastern
-margin of Asia, but a new continent. Balboa made his way through the
-forests as rapidly as he could, and on the 29th, wading into the surf,
-banner in hand, took possession of the waters in the name of the King
-of Castile.
-
-Balboa at once began preparations to utilize his discovery, for the
-Indians had also excited him and his men by tales of a country to the
-south abounding in gold. He cut and shaped timbers for small ships,
-and had with enormous trouble and labor transported these across the
-isthmus, intending there to build a fleet and sail southward, when
-he was superseded in command by a new governor, Pedrarias. This man,
-a jealous and brutal adventurer, on a false pretext of disloyalty
-arrested and beheaded Balboa before he could get away—an act that
-“was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to South
-America at that time; for ... a humane and judicious man would have
-been the conqueror of Peru, instead of the cruel and ignorant Pizarro.”
-The frightful destruction of the country of the Incas soon followed,
-while Cortés overran Mexico and De Soto invaded Florida.
-
-It has doubtless by this time been in the mind of more than one
-reader to ask whether, while the men of the Mediterranean region were
-making these notable searchings for new shores, the men of northern
-Europe were standing idle. What were the mariners of France and the
-Netherlands, Scandinavia and Great Britain, doing? Well, all were doing
-something, and some of them produced results of novel seafaring that
-were well worth the getting, but these were principally in far northern
-waters, as we shall read in the next chapter. It was not until the
-opening of the sixteenth century that in England, at least, that era
-of far voyaging began which signalized the Elizabethan age on the sea
-as much as the poets and dramatists and statesmen-writers of her court
-distinguished it on land.
-
-[Illustration: A PEACEFUL DAY ON THE SPANISH MAIN.]
-
-It was, however, earlier than that—in the reign of Henry VII—that
-England’s story of discovery begins, and the first names are those of
-two Italians known in English as John and Sebastian Cabot, father and
-son, who were then residents of Bristol. The Bristol folk were at that
-time the foremost mariners of England, who often went to Iceland and
-all the nearer isles; and they firmly believed in certain traditional
-islands and coasts far away to the west, which seem to have been
-composed of no better material than the airy structures of the sunset
-clouds and the romantic tales of Phenician sailors and other travelers
-in the dawn of history. As long ago as when Strabo wrote, a century
-before the birth of Christ, these things were of old belief, and he
-recounts the delights then told of the “Isles of the Blest,” west of
-the farthest verge of Africa. When the Canary Islands became known as
-facts, the myth moved farther west; and when acquaintance with the
-Azores proved them to be only natural earth with a fair share of its
-ills, as well as of its good, people insisted that still other islands
-must lie farther away, where the Elysian Fields basked in perpetual
-summer and men were eternally happy. The old idea charms us even yet
-when we sing “Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood stand dressed in
-living green.”
-
-[Illustration: VOYAGING TO THE ISLES OF THE BLEST.]
-
-But no such higher rendering occurred to the men of the earlier time.
-They believed firmly in the actual existence of these ever-fortunate
-islands under the sunset horizon of the Atlantic, and (in the north)
-called them the Isles of St. Brandon, the “green isle of Brazil”
-(the root of which word seems to express the idea of redness, such
-as appears in low sunset clouds), the Isle of the Seven Cities or
-Antillia, and by other names. Ferdinand Columbus, a son of Christopher,
-says in his “History” that his father fully expected to meet, “before
-he came to India, a very convenient island or continent from which he
-might pursue with more advantage his main design.” This does not prove
-that Columbus put any faith in the reality of these old notions, nor
-does he seem to be responsible for the fact that the name _Antilles_
-was immediately attached to the archipelago he actually did meet
-with, and The _Brazils_ to a part of the mainland next found. These
-names had been appearing on conjectural maps of the Atlantic side of
-the earth for many years before his time; and that they represented
-realities to many hard-headed merchants and sailors of his time is
-shown conclusively by the fact that between 1480 and 1487 at least two
-carefully planned naval expeditions had gone from Bristol, England,
-in search of them. How much vague memories of early Norse and Irish
-findings in the west may have given weight in Bristol to these old
-myths is hard to say; but at any rate it was there the search for this
-pot of gold at the end of the rainbow bore unexpected and momentous
-results, but all were surprised at the distance involved.
-
-About 1496 John Cabot, then a resident of Bristol, proposed to the
-king an expedition in search of a new route to the Indies by sailing
-due west from Ireland. Henry VII was excited by the news of Columbus’
-southerly findings, and was eager to secure something of the kind for
-England. Nevertheless, although the king granted privileges that might
-prove profitable in case of success, he seems to have furnished no
-money. Cabot, therefore, sailed away, privately equipped, in a small
-caravel named _Matthew_, carrying only eighteen persons.
-
-Never was a voyage of discovery, the consequences of which were so
-far-reaching, entered upon with less pomp or flourish of trumpets. So
-little note of it was made at the time that the very name of John Cabot
-narrowly escaped being lost altogether, and the record of his work came
-very near being replaced by a confused account of the doings of his son
-Sebastian; for it was not until certain letters had been found—and that
-within a very few years—in the contemporary archives of Spain and other
-European countries, that we were able to give any sure account of the
-matter.
-
-It is now plain that John Cabot, in the _Matthew_, leaving Bristol
-early in May, 1497, and having passed Ireland, shaped his course toward
-the north, then turned to the west and proceeded for many days until he
-came to land, where he disembarked on June 24, and planted an English
-flag.
-
-There seems to be no doubt that this was the mainland of North
-America, and the general opinion has prevailed that his landfall was
-the extremity of Cape Breton. Cabot stayed some days, but how far he
-traced the coast, and whether he learned of Newfoundland or Prince
-Edward Island, are matters of conjecture. At any rate, he soon turned
-homeward, and arrived in Bristol probably on August 6.
-
-We can imagine with what eagerness his story was listened to, as he
-told of the fair, temperate, well-wooded land, its people and animals
-and fruitfulness, that he had seen. But the thing that impressed the
-Bristol men most was the report of the enormous abundance of codfish
-there. This was something these canny men could see without any
-illusions, and possess themselves of regardless of papal bulls; and
-they at once abandoned their northern fishing-grounds and began to
-resort to the Banks of Newfoundland, whither they were quickly followed
-by large annual fleets of Norman, Breton, Spanish, and Portuguese
-fishermen. John Cabot intended to go again the next year and make his
-way onward to Japan, as he believed he could do, for, like the others,
-he thought what he had found was only a remote eastern part of Asia;
-and in 1498 he actually did sail westward from Bristol with five
-ships, victualed for a year. None of these ships ever returned, and
-no evidence exists that they ever reached their goal; and with them
-John Cabot, to whom England owed her early supremacy in North America,
-disappears from view.
-
-Sebastian Cabot was a son of John Cabot, and a skilful map-maker.
-Whether he went with his father on the first voyage is disputed; there
-seems no direct evidence that he did so. That he did not go on the
-second voyage is plain, for he had a long subsequent career, of which
-accurate knowledge is a late acquisition; here it is only necessary
-to add that by his statements to Peter Martyr and others he allowed
-the erroneous impression to pass into history, if he did not directly
-authorize the lie, that it was he, and not his father, who discovered
-America and the fishing-grounds.
-
-Now that the way across the Atlantic was learned, chivalrous sailors
-hurried to add what they could to the map. Corte-Real, a Portuguese
-of rank, struck northwest, and hit upon and named Labrador as early
-as 1500. The next voyage of prominence introduces the French as
-competitors, Francis I sending the Florentine Verrazano, a typical
-sea-rover of the period, who had already been to Brazil and the East
-Indies and was finally hanged as a pirate, to find out what he could
-about northern America. He steered west from the Madeira Islands in
-January, 1524, found land near Cape Fear (North Carolina), and claimed
-to have traced the coast as far north as Nova Scotia, besides entering
-a large bay (either New York or Narragansett). His whole story,
-however, rests on certain letters and maps the authenticity of which
-has been hotly disputed; and at any rate little, if anything, came of
-this voyage.
-
-It was far different with the next one, however,—that one sent from
-France in 1534, under the command of Jacques Cartier, who sailed from
-St. Malo in two tiny vessels to Newfoundland, and learned of the mouth
-of the St. Lawrence River. Then, like all the other captains, none of
-whom could stay over winter in America, because their vessels were too
-small to store provisions, and because they were beset by fears, not
-only of visible savages, but of invisible hobgoblins, he returned to
-France. The next year found him back again, however, this time steering
-his vessels up the St. Lawrence to “Hochelaga” (Montreal), and later
-carrying home an account that led to so immediate a movement on the
-part of France that Canada was the scene of the earliest colonization
-of the New World, properly speaking, for the Spanish settlements
-in the south were thus far nothing but military stations. France,
-indeed, dreamed of obtaining the whole of North America for herself,
-and attempted soon after to colonize Florida and the Carolinas; but
-these attempts failed, and she was able to hold only the valley of the
-St. Lawrence and the shore of its gulf. These things happened later,
-however, and for many years the Atlantic coast of North America was
-left unclaimed by any one, while the English and Dutch were busy in the
-far north, the Spanish were rioting in the tropics, and the Portuguese
-turned their attention to the southern and eastern quarters of the
-globe. It is one of the most striking curiosities of the history of
-the development of civilization on the globe, following the stagnation
-of the middle ages and the desolation of the plague-ridden thirteenth
-century, that the most remote, unprofitable, unhealthy regions were so
-fiercely struggled for, while the best parts of the New World were left
-until the last.
-
-Having found Brazil, both Spaniards and Portuguese proceeded to trace
-the continent southward, hoping to find a practicable way to Peru
-around it. Several experienced navigators worked southward, the best
-known of whom is Juan Diaz de Solis, who entered the La Plata River
-and was killed there by the Indians in 1516. Columbus had not been a
-moment too soon to be first. Nevertheless it was left to a stranger in
-those waters, the indomitable Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães), to reap
-the reward of success. The Pope and all the bishops still declared
-that the earth was flat; but so little was this now believed, even
-by themselves, that Magellan, who had just quitted the service of
-Portugal, dared to propose to “his most Catholic majesty” the King of
-Spain to sail west instead of east to the Moluccas, just as though the
-earth were globular and might be circumnavigated; and the king not only
-dared to listen, but approved of the proposition, which seemed entirely
-practicable _if_ South America could be passed. That was the problem
-Magellan set himself to solve. Should he succeed, could the Moluccas
-be reached by sailing westward, then they would fall into that half of
-the earth given by the Pope to Spain, and Portugal’s present claim to
-them would be overthrown. Thus the experiment was well worth making in
-behalf of politics as well as knowledge, and Magellan was furnished
-with five ships, carrying two hundred and thirty-seven men. The
-_Trinidad_ was the admiral’s ship; but the _San Vittoria_ was destined
-for immortality.
-
-  He struck boldly for the Southwest, not crossing the trough of the
-  Atlantic as Columbus had done, but passing down the length of it, his
-  aim being to find some cleft or passage in the American continent
-  through which he might sail into the Great South Sea. For seventy
-  days he was becalmed under the line. He then lost sight of the
-  North Star, but courageously held on toward the “pole antarktike.”
-  He nearly foundered in a storm, “which did not abate till the three
-  fires called St. Helen, St. Nicholas, and St. Clare appeared playing
-  in the rigging of the ships. In a new land, to which he gave the name
-  Patagoni, he found giants of “good corporature”.... His perseverance
-  and resolution were at last rewarded by the discovery of the Strait
-  named by him San Vittoria, in affectionate honor of his ship; but
-  which, with a worthy sentiment, other sailors soon changed to the
-  _Straits of Magellan_. On November 25, 1520, after a year and a
-  quarter of struggling, he issued forth from its western portals, and
-  entered the Great South Sea, shedding tears of joy, as Pigafetta, an
-  eye-witness, relates, when he recognized its infinite expanse....
-  Admiring its illimitable but placid surface, and exulting in the
-  meditation of its secret perils soon to be tried, he courteously
-  imposed upon it the name it is forever to bear—the _Pacific Ocean_....
-
-  And now the great sailor, having burst through the barrier of the
-  American continent, steered for the northwest, attempting to regain
-  the equator. For three months and twenty days he sailed on the
-  Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He was compelled by famine to
-  strip off the pieces of skin and leather wherewith his rigging was
-  here and there bound, to soak them in the sea, and then soften them
-  with warm water, so as to make a wretched food; to eat the sweepings
-  of the ship and other loathsome matter; to drink water that had
-  become putrid by keeping; and yet he resolutely held on his course,
-  though his men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, “their gums
-  grew over their teeth, and so they could not eat.” [This was scurvy,
-  the dread of all mariners in those times and long afterward.] He
-  estimated that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than
-  12,000 miles.
-
-  In the whole history of human undertakings [declares Dr. John W.
-  Draper, from whose striking sketch of this achievement in his
-  “Intellectual Development of Europe” I am quoting]—in the whole
-  history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds, if,
-  indeed, there is anything that equals, this voyage of Magellan’s.
-  That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a display of
-  superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance—a display of resolution
-  not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive or any suffering....
-
-  This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. Magellan reached
-  a group of islands north of the equator—the Ladrones. In a few
-  days more he became aware that his labors had been successful. He
-  met with adventurers from Sumatra. But, though he had thus grandly
-  accomplished his object, it was not given to him to complete the
-  circumnavigation of the globe. At an island called Zebu, or Mutan,
-  he was killed, either, as has been variously related, in a mutiny of
-  his men, or, as they declared, in a conflict with the savages, or
-  insidiously by poison.... Hardly was he gone when his crew learned
-  that they were actually in the vicinity of the Moluccas [having
-  previously wandered too far north, and discovered the Philippines],
-  and that the object of their voyage was accomplished....
-
-  And now they prepared to bring the news of their success back to
-  Spain. Magellan’s lieutenant, Sebastian d’Elanco, directed his course
-  for the Cape of Good Hope, again encountering the most fearful
-  hardships. Out of his slender crew he lost 21 men. He doubled the
-  Cape at last; and on September 7, 1522, in the port of St. Lucar,
-  near Seville, under his orders, the good ship _Vittoria_ came safely
-  to an anchor. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the
-  history of the human race. She had circumnavigated the earth.
-
-The immediate result of this voyage was to impress Spain’s sovereignty
-upon the East Indies; but a vaster and more far-reaching consequence
-was the influence it exerted, by its proof that the world was really
-a globe, to free men’s minds from blind belief in and guidance by a
-tradition, which had taught that the earth was a flat plain surrounded
-by water,—an error sanctioned by St. Augustine and other influential
-teachers. Magellan impressed a name upon the greatest of the oceans,
-and has his own name gloriously emblazoned upon both the map of the
-earth and the map of the sky in the southern hemisphere; but his
-greatest title to honor, after all, is that he struck dogma the hardest
-blow it ever received.
-
-[Illustration: SEA-SURF AT SANTO DOMINGO.]
-
-The sixteenth century seems to have been, outside of the Arctic
-regions, an era of surveying rather than of exploration by sea, yet
-some notable work was done in the East, where all nations now entered
-as competitors in the trade, seizing upon every island or mainland
-shore that they could, and holding their possessions as long as
-possible. Even the English entered heartily into this rivalry, the
-great East India Company having been founded in 1599. With its trading
-we have nothing to do, but must note that it extended knowledge of
-Oceanica considerably, and added greatly to Europe’s information as
-to India, the Malayan peninsula and larger islands, China, and Japan.
-The Spanish and Portuguese found themselves so busy in defending that
-to which they already laid claim that they had little time to search
-for new lands; and this sort of enterprise fell mainly to the Dutch,
-who, now that the Netherlands were at last free from the long and cruel
-tyranny of Spain, were energetically making up for lost time. Their
-captain, Van Noort, went out by way of the Straits of Magellan to the
-Philippines, and got back to Rotterdam between 1598 and 1601. Another
-fleet made the same voyage fifteen years later; and in 1616 Cape Horn
-was rounded by Willem Cornelis Schouten, who gave the name of his home
-village, Hoorn, to that desolate terminus of South America.
-
-For many years geographers had held belief in a vast “southern
-continent,”—_Terra Australis_,—and most of the islands found in the
-South Pacific were accidental results of some attempt to reach it. New
-Guinea had been sighted a century before, and perhaps Australia also,
-of which several navigators got glimpses here and there early in the
-sixteenth century, satisfying them that it also was a great island.
-It was not until this century was half gone, however, that the map
-of that quarter of the “South Sea” was filled out with any accuracy;
-and this was due to the skill and labor of an eminent Dutch voyager,
-Abel Janszen Tasman, who was despatched southward with two ships by
-the colonial government at Batavia, where the Dutch had already gained
-political ascendancy.
-
-“This voyage,” we are told, “proved to be the most important to
-geography that had been undertaken since the first circumnavigation of
-the globe.” Tasman sailed from Batavia in the yacht _Heemskirk_, on
-the 14th of August, 1642, and from Mauritius on the 8th of October. On
-November 24 high land was sighted in 42° 30´ S., which was named Van
-Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), and, after landing there, sail was again
-made, and New Zealand (at first called Staatenland) was discovered on
-the 13th of December. Tasman communicated with the natives and anchored
-in what he called Murderers’ Bay, because several men were massacred
-there by the natives. Thence he took an irregular course east and
-north, until he arrived at the Friendly Isles of Cook. In April, 1643,
-he was off the north coast of New Guinea, having meanwhile sailed
-around New Britain and New Ireland (now New Mecklenburg), and on June
-15 he returned to Batavia.
-
-The contribution to sea-knowledge of the remaining voyages in this
-century were mainly in the direction of a better understanding of
-winds, currents, ice movements, tides, and an improvement in the
-methods of building, rigging, and navigating vessels intended for
-long voyages. Map-making received a great impetus and was especially
-cultivated by the Dutch, among whom Mercator became famous by inventing
-the useful projection that bears his name and is still most commonly
-used. Nevertheless, the improvement, especially in instruments of
-navigation, was slow. The astrolabe generally gave place to the
-cross-staff; and this to a better device called the back-staff, of
-which an improved form, invented by John Davis, remained long in use.
-This was called the Davis quadrant; and with it “the observer stood
-with his back to the sun, and, looking through the sights, brought the
-shadow of a pin into coincidence with the horizon.” Many variations of
-this instrument were made, until, in the middle of the next century, it
-was superseded by the sextant. Thus before the close of the seventeenth
-century, astronomers and navigators had learned how to determine
-latitude fairly accurately, and the sailor had prepared for him a
-variety of tables of stars, almanacs, and other mathematical guides.
-The determination of longitude was yet difficult, however, owing
-largely to the imperfection of timepieces; and it was not until the
-last year of the century, signalized by the first recorded sea-voyage
-made purely for scientific purposes, that much advance was made. This
-voyage, lasting two years (1699-1700), was undertaken by the eminent
-English astronomer Edmund Halley for the express purpose of obtaining
-information necessary to the improvement of the compass and methods
-of ascertaining the position of a ship at sea, was productive of
-results of the greatest service, and placed the science of navigation
-upon a sure footing. It was followed early in the next century by
-the establishment in England of the Longitude Board, a scientific
-commission charged with the duty of determining longitudes and studying
-navigation. From this board came the “Nautical Almanac,” which first
-appeared in 1767, but similar almanacs are now published annually by
-the governments of almost all maritime powers, and the editorship is
-esteemed in the United States one of the most honored positions in the
-naval service. These books contain ephemerides, or tables of positions
-for each day of that year of all the heavenly bodies, “predictions of
-astronomical phenomena, and the angular distances of the moon from the
-sun, planets, and fixed stars,” all referred to some stated meridian.
-
-With such an almanac, an improved compass, and one of Newton’s new
-sextants as a means of quick and accurate observation of sun and moon
-and stars, the navigator had little need to doubt as to where he was;
-and maps began to show a corresponding improvement in accuracy.
-
-[Illustration: “BUCCANEERS AND MANY WILD SEA-ROVERS.”]
-
-The early part of this century, as we shall see later, was the era of
-the buccaneers and of many wild sea-rovers whose far-wandering barks,
-in search of adventure, picked up much information at the expense
-of human lives and hard-earned property. The foremost of these was
-Dampier, who seems to have gone almost everywhere a ship could go,
-and who found out many new things, which he had the power of telling
-well, as to Australasia; and the strait between New Guinea and New
-Britain, which he discovered, is named after him. Many a commander was
-now cruising in those waters, however, under English and Dutch flags
-mainly, finding new lands and pillaging old ones—such as Roggewein,
-Anson, Byron, Wallis, Carteret, Bougainville, and others; and such
-important islands as Easter, Tahiti, Charlotte, and Gloucester groups,
-Pitcairn, and others, were found during the first half of this century.
-But now the English were to redeem their good name by sending out a
-government expedition, or series of expeditions, whose object was
-scientific discovery and the humane study of the men and resources on
-the other side of the world, instead of forced trade or bloody rapine.
-These were the three expeditions commanded by Captain James Cook, one
-of the most capable officers in the British navy.
-
-The first voyage was made in 1767 for the purpose of carrying a party
-of astronomers and naturalists to Tahiti to observe there a transit of
-Venus, after which a survey was made of the then almost unknown coasts
-of New Zealand and Eastern Australia. The second voyage was to explore
-the Antarctic regions, whither the French had preceded him, as we shall
-see in the next chapter; and we need only say here that Cook finally
-disposed of the tradition of a vast _terra australis_—at any rate a
-habitable one. It is to his third voyage, then, that he principally
-owes his fame.
-
-This was undertaken in pursuance of the ruling idea of his day, that a
-sea-route might be discovered north of the American continent, which
-would vastly shorten the trip from Europe to China and the Spice
-Islands. Others were seeking it directly by way of Baffin’s Bay, and
-Cook was sent to attack the problem from the Pacific side. He was
-given command of his old ship _Resolution_ and a new one, _Discovery_,
-outfitted in the best possible manner, and especially guarded, in the
-matter of provisions, against scurvy—that dread of the old-fashioned
-seamen, in respect to which Cook himself had introduced such new and
-valuable preventives as would alone have entitled his name to grateful
-remembrance. He was commanded to revisit, on his way out, the South
-Pacific Islands; and departed from England in June, 1776, steering by
-way of the Cape of Good Hope, and reaching the archipelagoes in the
-spring of 1777, where he cruised for nearly a year. In January, 1778,
-he sailed north from the Friendly Islands, and a few days later hit
-upon a large, inhabited, unknown group of islands, whose principal one
-was called Hawaii by the people, but which he named Sandwich Islands,
-in honor of an English earl who had taken great interest in his plans.
-Here he spent some delightful days, and then bore away to the west
-coast of America, which the English still claimed under Drake’s name of
-New Albion, and which he struck near Puget Sound. Thence he went slowly
-along the coast northward until he found and penetrated the deep bay
-since called Cook’s Inlet. His hope that this might prove a sort of
-northern Straits of Magellan was quickly disappointed, and he went on
-into and through Bering Sea and Strait until he was stopped by the ice
-on the north shore of Alaska, at a point still called Icy Cape. Then he
-turned back, surveying both shores of the strait, and again made his
-way to the Sandwich Islands, where, in an unfortunate quarrel with the
-natives, he was killed. The Hawaiians have always said that this was
-the act of a ruffian among them, and that the chiefs and the best of
-the people never wished nor intended any harm to their visitors; and
-this is probably true. His executive officer took the ships back to
-England in October, 1780.
-
-The voyages of this able and intelligent commander bore fruit in
-many ways. One was the colonization of Australia, Tasmania, and New
-Zealand by the English, which began in 1788. Another was the voyage
-of Vancouver to the west coast of America in 1792, which intercepted
-the surveys of the Spaniards there, under Quadra and others, and
-enforced English possession of all the country between the Californian
-settlements of the Spaniards and the Russian posts in Alaska, though
-he curiously failed to find either Puget Sound or the Columbia River.
-A third direct result, and from some points of view the most important
-one, was the opening of a great number of the South Sea Islands to
-Christian missionaries.
-
-By this time there had arisen in the New World which these voyagers had
-first stumbled upon, and then searched for, and afterward scrutinized
-so carefully, a new, composite nation, which somehow forgot that all
-their broad and fertile land had been given away centuries before by
-an old gentleman in Rome to his friends the Spaniards, and acted as
-though they thought it belonged to themselves; and by and by this
-thriving nation hoisted a starry flag of its own, and proclaimed itself
-the United States of America. Then, not to be behind European powers,
-whose navigators were enriching libraries with magnificent chronicles
-of scientific studies in sea-science, such as those of the French
-“Voyage of the _Astrolabe_,” the Russian narratives of Krusenstern
-and Kotzebue, and the English explorations of Beechey (who was
-accompanied by Charles Darwin), the United States sent to the Pacific a
-well-equipped expedition under Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Charles
-Wilkes. This was gone from 1838 to 1845, surveyed the west coast of
-South America, wandered about Oceanica, and did its best to penetrate
-the icy limits of the Antarctic zone. The results were six magnificent
-folio volumes, containing not only the narrative of the cruise, but
-contributions to science by James D. Dana, Horatio Hale, John Cassin,
-and other men of the last generation great in American science.
-
-[Illustration: end of chapter decoration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V
-
-SECRETS WON FROM THE FROZEN NORTH
-
-
-As soon as the sea-routes between Europe and the far East were learned,
-and the American coasts had been mapped, the region within the Arctic
-circle became the most attractive field for nautical discovery. All
-this earlier Arctic exploration, however, was not, as it has lately
-become, a system of scientific research, but was simply a series of
-attempts to open new roads for commerce to follow. It occurred to every
-navigator that as a sea-way had been gained past the southern end of
-America, so one around its northern border might be disclosed; and
-perhaps, also, a ship-route along the northern coast of Siberia. Either
-of these would be far shorter than to go to “Cathay” around either
-Cape Horn or Cape of Good Hope, and would enable the English and other
-northerners to avoid their enemies, the Spanish and Portuguese, who
-commanded the southern waters.
-
-The first Arctic voyage of exploration, properly speaking, was that of
-Willoughby and Chancellor, who in 1553 penetrated the seas north of
-Scandinavia, where they became separated. Willoughby and his men tried
-to winter on the coast of Russian Lapland, but all died of scurvy.
-
-Chancellor, however, pushed on into the White Sea, reached a monastery
-on the coast, and thence made his way to Moscow, where he was well
-received, and thus opened a trade route of incalculable advantage to
-both England and Russia. It led at once to the organization of the
-Muscovy Company, and began a commerce now regularly carried on in
-steam vessels to Archangel, which in 1897 was connected with Moscow by
-railroad.
-
-By 1580 several other commanders had tried to improve on this
-performance, but none got past the Kara Sea, and the next important
-effort was headed toward that “Northwest Passage,” which for more than
-three centuries was the lodestone of Arctic students and voyagers.
-It was in charge of Martin Frobisher, later one of England’s most
-conspicuous admirals, who afterward made a larger expedition in which
-he learned many facts about the Labrador coast and Hudson Strait.
-Another English seaman, and a more scientific one, John Davis, made
-three remarkable voyages, between 1585 and 1589, and increased the map
-by a careful delineation of both coasts of the strait still called
-after him.
-
-Shortly afterward Dutch merchants had sent three expeditions northward
-under command of William Barentz to search for a _northeast_ passage,
-the third and most important of which sailed in 1596 and found it
-impossible to penetrate the ice east of Nova Zembla (which had been
-seen first by Burrough in 1556, who had been shown the way by Russian
-fishermen), but discovered Bear Island and Spitzbergen. The crew
-of Barentz’s vessel spent the winter of 1596-97 at Ice Haven, Nova
-Zembla—the first successfully to face a winter in the Arctic zone.
-When the next spring came they made their way to Lapland and homeward
-in boats, but Barentz died on the road. This voyage was highly
-important in opening to the Netherlands the whale and seal fisheries
-of that region which has ever since been known as Barentz’s Sea, but
-it discouraged the hopes of a “northeast passage.” In 1871 Barentz’s
-winter quarters at Ice Haven were found undisturbed, after a lapse of
-274 years, and in 1875 part of the journal kept by this brave mariner
-was recovered. Almost every year about this time saw English, Dutch,
-and Danish ships going north, each adding some new fact to geography
-and the knowledge of polar waters and ice. One of them, in 1607, was
-commanded by Henry Hudson, who searched the North Atlantic, found Jan
-Mayen, and pointed the way to the Spitzbergen whale fisheries; yet he
-had hardly more than a sail-boat, and a crew of only eleven men.
-
-The following year this intrepid man tried to go to China north of
-Asia, but failed as Barentz had done, and returned “void of hope of a
-northeast passage.” Nevertheless, he tried it again a year later in
-the service of Amsterdam merchants, but his men were obstreperous,
-and, yielding to his own inclination as well as to theirs, he turned
-west to find that “Northwest Passage” in which everybody then believed
-because they hoped, and because of the difficulty of getting so great
-a fact as the real North American continent proved to be accepted by
-the popular imagination, which was used to small things in geography.
-Very willingly, then, Hudson’s little ship, the _Half Moon_, was turned
-toward the southwest; and it found something better than it sought, for
-the Hudson River and the site of the future metropolis of the New World
-were added to the map.
-
-Hudson’s success in this voyage led to his immediate engagement by a
-company of English merchants and speculators, who were willing to risk
-additional money in searching for a northwest passage if he would lead.
-
-In 1610, therefore, Hudson took command of a new ship, the
-_Discoverie_, and sailing in her to Baffin’s Bay, found the great
-opening of Hudson Strait, and with high hope that his goal was now
-in view followed it westward into Hudson Bay. Here he coasted south
-to what we term James Bay, and, after a comfortable winter, resumed
-his examination of the west coast, whereupon the majority of his men
-mutinied, set Hudson and several sick men adrift in a rowboat, and
-turned back. Most of the mutineers died, but the vessel was finally
-taken back to London, where the murderers were promptly questioned and
-nearly as promptly hanged.
-
-The story of another remarkable voyage closes the story of this early
-attempt at the problem which, two hundred and fifty years afterward,
-was to be solved only by proof of its uselessness. In 1616 another
-_Discovery_—a caravel of only fifty-five tons—went north from England
-in charge of William Baffin. “On the 30th of May he had reached Davis’
-farthest point, Sanderson’s Hope, in 72° 41´ N., ... and reached, 1st
-July, an open sea, the ‘North Water’ of the whalers of to-day. Passing
-Capes York, Atholl and Parry, he yet pushed northward, and on 5th July
-attained his farthest point within sight of Cape Alexander.
-
-His latitude, about 77° 45´ N., remained unequaled in that sea for two
-hundred and thirty-six years.” Arctic success depends on good luck.
-
-[Illustration: FANTASTIC ICEBERGS IN HUDSON STRAIT.]
-
-The next century (1700 to 1800) was a period of active polar research
-in the Old World. The Russians completed their knowledge of their
-Arctic coasts, Popoff reaching East Cape in 1711, and bringing back
-an account not only of various islands, but also of a continental
-shore eastward. It was this report that caused Peter the Great to set
-on foot a costly scheme of research upon the northeastern coasts of
-Siberia, which was placed in the hands of Vitus Bering, a Dane, in his
-navy, but accomplished nothing of any value; and it was not until 1740
-that Bering finally crossed over in a blundering sort of way and made
-a brief examination of the coast of Alaska, where his ship was finally
-wrecked, and he died of discouragement and chagrin. He saw neither the
-sea nor the strait that bears his name, was not the first to reach the
-American continent, and never learned whether or not it was connected
-with Siberia. Nevertheless his voyage had fruitful results, for it
-led to vast fisheries and fur-gatherings, and the writings of his
-naturalist, Steller, had and still have great scientific importance.
-
-[Illustration: A WALRUS BREEDING-GROUND, BERING STRAIT.]
-
-By this time the whaling and allied marine industries, and the work of
-such excellent explorers as the Dutchman Martens, had made mariners
-thoroughly acquainted with the North Atlantic from Nova Zembla to
-Greenland, and a vast advance had been effected in the knowledge of
-navigation amid the ice, and in the building and equipment of ships
-and the proper methods of provisioning and clothing and treating crews
-in order to maintain health and comfort as well as mere safety. These
-well-fitted and daringly managed whalers had at the beginning of the
-nineteenth century begun to penetrate far into the waters west of
-Greenland, in spite of a very curious fact, which would make anybody
-but a British whaleman pause—namely, that there were no such waters. So
-their best maps and treatises said!
-
-Two hundred years had now passed since Baffin’s return from his
-wonderful voyage of 1616, and during all that time not a white man’s
-keel had plowed the chilling solitudes he had left, except lately these
-venturesome whalers, who did not frequent libraries. Consequently
-Baffin’s work had first been forgotten and then disbelieved; so that
-at last first-class maps were published which omitted Baffin’s Bay
-altogether, and books were written, such as Barrows’ “Arctic Voyages”
-(London, 1818), that denied the authenticity of his narrative. As the
-nineteenth century opened, however, England began to turn her attention
-to the renewal of polar studies. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s men were
-reaching the coast of their Territories here and there; but otherwise
-the whole Arctic Ocean north of British America was unknown.
-
-To relieve herself of the shame of this Great Britain soon sent into
-that field a rapid succession of explorers, many of whom soon became
-famous. The very first of these, John Ross, despatched in 1818,
-confirmed fully the geography laid down by Baffin as far as Cape York,
-in spite of the learned book-makers, and reported a great number and
-variety of interesting facts; whereupon a much larger expedition was at
-once arranged and placed in command of a naval officer named William
-Edward Parry, who went out in 1819 with orders to find the northwest
-passage, and who had in his staff such men as Sabine, Liddon, James
-Ross, Reid, Crozier, and similar material, all stimulated not only by
-naval and scientific pride, but by the offer by Parliament of a reward
-of $100,000 to him who should first discover the desired thoroughfare.
-
-This first voyage was a grand success. Forcing his way into Lancaster
-Sound in midsummer, Parry found that Ross’s report that it was a
-landlocked bay was erroneous. As Greely tells it:
-
-  The mirage-mountains of the previous year had vanished, and as Parry
-  crowded sail westward, he opened a series of magnificent waterways
-  hitherto unknown. The way lay through an archipelago (Parry), with
-  North Devon, Cornwallis, Bathurst and Melville islands to the north,
-  and Cockburn, Prince of Wales, and Banks islands to the south.
-  Lancaster Sound, broken at its western end by Prince Regent Inlet,
-  gave way to Barrow Strait, which broadened into Melville Sound, while
-  yet farther to the west the encroaching land formed Banks Strait
-  wherethrough these channels open into polar ocean.
-
-If you will look at the map you will see that this list comprehends
-pretty nearly everything south of Smith Sound. Many details of course
-were lacking, and these Parry was sent a second time to work out,
-but he added really little to geography by two seasons of hard work;
-and a third voyage, begun in May, 1824, was still more unfortunate.
-These voyages, however, enabled Parry, who was one of the greatest
-of all Arctic students and navigators, to state that the western
-sides of all northerly and southerly bodies of water are always more
-encumbered with ice than the eastern sides; and to make many most
-valuable improvements in ice navigation and equipment. His illustrated
-narratives remain among the most readable books of Arctic experience,
-and little has been added to their accounts of eastern Eskimo life and
-customs.
-
-Meanwhile (1819) another navy officer, who was ardent in the scientific
-branches of his profession, as well as distinguished in seamanship and
-naval warfare, and who had acquired Arctic experience under Buchan in
-the ill-starred expedition of 1818, was sent overland to coöperate with
-others in defining the mainland coast of America. This was Lieutenant
-John Franklin—a name destined to become the most famous of all among
-the explorers of the frozen North. For several years he and his
-parties lived and traveled among the Eskimos, tracing the coast-line
-from a considerable distance east of the mouth of the Coppermine
-River westward almost to Point Barrow, Alaska, where they came within
-one hundred and forty-six miles of meeting Beechey’s coöperative
-examination by sea from Bering’s Strait; and it was out of these trips
-that we got the valuable treatises upon the natural history of British
-America, published by his assistants, Hearne and Richardson. This ended
-in 1826.
-
-The next prominent expedition was that of Captain John Ross and his
-nephew James, afterward celebrated in Antarctic exploration; and it
-turned out an exceedingly productive one. Meeting fortunate conditions
-in Lancaster Sound he easily reached where the _Fury_ had gone
-ashore, and refilled his ship with a portion of the stores Parry had
-thoughtfully landed and made safe there—a provision which later kept
-this expedition from destruction. Then he pressed on beyond where
-Parry had gone, and added largely to the details of his map, but
-curiously failed to recognize Bellot Strait as a thoroughfare, and so
-unaccountably missed the thing he was in search of. Ross discovered
-Boothia Felix; and during the three winters spent on its eastern shore,
-the younger Ross, by sledging, discovered Franklin Passage, Victoria
-Strait, and King William’s Land, and largely explored their coasts;
-but his most important work, “giving imperishable renown to his name,”
-as Greely declares, was the determination of the position of the north
-magnetic pole on the west coast of Boothia Felix.
-
-“The experiences, duration, and results of this voyage,” writes General
-A. W. Greely, “are among the most extraordinary on record. The party
-passed five years in the Arctic regions without fatality, save three
-(two from non-Arctic causes), discovered a new land, the northern
-extremity of the continent of America, and made other extensive
-geographical discoveries. Its observations are probably the most
-valuable single set ever made within the Arctic circle.”
-
-[Illustration: ESKIMOS IN SUMMER TENTS.]
-
-During the third winter (1833) a rescuing party under Captain C. Back
-had gone from England overland in search of Ross; and recruited by
-Hudson’s Bay Company men of experience had descended Fish (or Back’s)
-River to its mouth, thus noting a new point on the map; but it failed
-to reach Ross. By similar overland journeys from their trading-posts
-on Great Slave Lake and elsewhere, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s men,
-especially Simpson, Dease, and Rae, connected various points of the
-coast, so that before 1850 it was known with substantial accuracy from
-Melville Peninsula to Bering Strait. In much the same way Russian
-sledge-travelers had traced the northern Asiatic coast by descending
-to the mouths of rivers; but no ship had yet succeeded in passing Gape
-Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of Asia or any continental land.
-
-Then came a period of the keenest rivalry and richest results in the
-history of polar conquest, but also one of the greatest catastrophes.
-The expeditions of Lieutenant John Franklin in 1818 and 1819 were
-spoken of a moment ago. His services then and subsequently had been
-recognized by the British king, who, among other honors, had made
-Franklin a knight, and sent him to be governor of Van Diemen’s Land
-(Tasmania), where he remained from 1836 to 1843, founded a prosperous
-colony, and was regarded as one of the wisest, kindest, and most
-upright men of his day. Upon his return to England Franklin was made
-commander of the most important expedition that had ever yet been
-fitted out to search for the Northwest Passage, and his reputation
-brought the best men as volunteers to his standard. Having selected 134
-officers and men, and made the best equipment possible, Captain Sir
-John Franklin sailed on May 19, 1845, in the _Erebus_ and _Terror_,
-Parry’s old ships. On the 26th of July they were seen proceeding
-prosperously up Baffin’s Bay by a whaler, who reported them in due
-course, but neither ships or crews were heard of again for many years.
-
-Anxiety over the long silence at length aroused the people of England
-and the United States to begin a search for them which lasted through
-many years. It was fruitless as to its first object,—the rescue of
-Franklin or any survivors,—but it gradually cleared up the sad mystery,
-and it was the means of learning all, and more than all, that Franklin
-sought to ascertain.
-
-The search began by the despatch, early in 1848, of Sir James Ross in
-two ships, _Investigator_ and _Enterprise_, which wintered near the
-northeast point of North Devon, and returned the following year with no
-tidings, although they afforded the second officer, Lieutenant F. R.
-M’Clintock, an opportunity to acquire a knowledge of sledging, which
-he afterward used to advantage. This failure only aroused England to
-renewed efforts.
-
-Many ships were started out at once, and also parties overland, of
-which mention will be made later. The _Herald_ and _Plover_, during
-1848 and 1849, scanned the whole coast from Bering Sea to the mouth of
-the Mackenzie, and discovered Herald Island. Following them, in March,
-1850, went the _Enterprise_, under Collinson, and the _Investigator_,
-under M’Clure, via Bering Strait, while the _Assistance_ and
-_Resolute_, with two steam tenders, under Captain Austin, went to
-renew the search by Barrow Strait, and two brigs, the _Lady Franklin_
-and _Sophia_, under a whaling captain named Penny, followed them. The
-eastern expeditions discovered Franklin’s winter quarters of 1845-46
-at Beechey Island, but no record of any kind indicating the direction
-taken by his ships. Admirable arrangements were made for passing the
-winter, and their combined sailing and sledging work added much to the
-map of that district, and to our knowledge of life in polar latitudes,
-but it learned nothing whatever of Franklin’s fate.
-
-[Illustration: A FLOATING ICE-CASTLE OF THE FROZEN NORTH.
-
-  “Out from the dark, mysterious North,
-      With all its glamour, every night
-
-  Tingling with unforgotten dreams,
-      And every day flood-full of light.”
-]
-
-Meanwhile the expedition via Bering Sea had become separated in the
-Pacific, and M’Clure, in the _Investigator_, got so far ahead that he
-was able to pass through Bering Strait and work his way eastward north
-of British America, and through the narrow Prince of Wales Strait until
-he reached Princess Royal Islands, where he wintered. Here he was only
-thirty miles from Barrow Strait; and when he had climbed a high hill
-and saw its ice gleaming in the distance, he had in reality discovered
-the Northwest Passage. Yet he was not the first, as we now know, for
-when the survivors of Franklin’s ships, in their attempt to escape,
-had reached Cape Herschel, they, too, saw this same passage they had
-been sent to find, but then, as now, it was closed by perpetual ice,
-so that although we now know the way, we can no more avail ourselves
-of it than could they, except by going south of King William’s Land,
-through a strait of which they had not yet learned. The next summer
-was spent in a fruitless struggle to get north along the western side
-of Banks (or Baring) Land, in which he succeeded only far enough to get
-frozen in so firmly on the north shore of that great island that even
-the summer warmth did not release his ship. He would have perished had
-it not been that musk-oxen were plentiful; and by the spring of 1853,
-it was plain that the _Investigator_ must be abandoned.
-
-The _Enterprise_ meanwhile had followed M’Clure in the spring of 1851,
-and passed two years in searching every shore and passage she could
-find, while her men made sledge-journeys far and near, as M’Clure’s men
-were doing, and once came within a few miles of Point Victory, where
-Franklin’s remains would have been found. At last, in the spring of
-1854, she succeeded in making her way back along the American coast,
-and returned to England, completing one of the most remarkable of
-Arctic voyages.
-
-During their absence the friends of Franklin had not been idle. The
-apparent sacrifice of this fine character aroused almost or quite as
-much interest in America as in England, and Yankee shipmasters knew
-the north as well as did the men of England and Scandinavia. Henry
-Grinnell, a prominent merchant in New York, furnished the money to fit
-out two ships, the _Advance_ and _Rescue_, commanded by Lieutenants De
-Haven and Griffiths, of the United States navy. They assisted in the
-search about Beechey Island, then struck north and discovered Grinnell
-Land, after which they returned before the winter had closed in. With
-them was a young physician and traveler, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who
-persuaded Mr. Grinnell to send him again to the north, less to search
-for Franklin, whom he had despaired of, than to prosecute explorations
-in higher latitudes. In 1853, in command of the little brig _Advance_,
-manned principally by whaling men, he left New London, Conn., and
-made his way straight up to the head of Baffin’s Bay, which narrows
-northward into Smith Sound, where, on the eastern, or Greenland, shore
-of its expansion, since called Kane Basin, he was stopped by ice and
-remained a prisoner until rescued in 1855.
-
-Dr. Kane wrote the histories of these expeditions, and especially of
-the latter one, in books so charmingly expressed, and abounding in such
-novel information, that they were read like romances in every home in
-the land, and did more to fire the ardor for Arctic discovery which has
-ever since glowed in this country, than anything else that had been
-said or done. The most immediate result was that Dr. I. I. Hayes, who
-had been with Kane, took a ship to Smith Sound and spent the winter of
-1860-61 there, but with little result. More came from the expeditions
-led by an enthusiastic journalist of Cincinnati, Charles F. Hall, but
-before speaking of these, let us return to the English search for
-Franklin.
-
-Undeterred by the failure of Austin and Penny, or the silence of
-Collinson and M’Clure, the British government in 1852 despatched again
-the four vessels used by Austin, and added a fifth, the _Assistance_,
-and a store-ship, the _North Star_, to form a depôt of supplies
-at Beechey Island. The old haphazard ways had given place to very
-systematic methods of advance and rescue; but steam was little employed
-as yet, because of the trouble and cost of supplying coal, although two
-small steam vessels, as tenders, accompanied this, the largest and most
-bountifully equipped expedition that had yet started out. The fleet,
-under command of Sir Edward Belcher, proceeded through Lancaster Sound,
-beyond which they scattered somewhat, and spent the first winter in
-extensive sledge-journeys, during which they discovered (by a message
-that M’Clure had left on Melville Island) where the _Investigator_ was
-imprisoned, and rescued all its people in June, 1853.
-
-This great expedition learned nothing of Franklin, although it did
-learn much of other Arctic matters, and left the map substantially
-complete south and west of Jones Sound; but its honors rested upon
-M’Clure, who, first of all recorded men, had really made the Northwest
-Passage by sailing and sledging around the northern end of America. The
-settlement of this long-discussed matter had proved it of no practical
-value; but the British Parliament kept its word, and gave £10,000 (half
-of the promised reward) to the officers and crew of the _Investigator_,
-besides raising M’Clure to knighthood. An incident of this expedition
-is the fact that Kellett’s abandoned ship _Resolute_ survived crushing
-long enough to drift out through Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound and
-down into Davis Strait, where in September, 1855, she was found and
-towed home by an American whaler. As she was little injured, she was
-presented to the British government with the compliments of the United
-States, and a few years later, when she came to be broken up, a fine
-table was made from her oaken timbers, and returned as a present to
-Uncle Sam; and it now stands in the private office of the President of
-the United States in the Executive Mansion at Washington.
-
-Two great facts had now been ascertained. One was that none of
-Franklin’s men or ships survived. The other fact was, that although
-there was plenty of water north of the American continent, it was so
-obstructed by permanent ice that probably no vessel could ever make its
-way through from the Atlantic to the Pacific; none has done so yet,
-despite the determined effort of the steam yacht _Pandora_ in 1875,
-but ships from the east have reached points also reached by ships from
-the west. The everlasting ice sheet of the polar ocean, ever crowding
-down upon this northern coast and into the channels between the islands
-north of it, forms a barrier that will very rarely, if ever, pause or
-open long enough to let a vessel through, even south of King William
-and Victoria lands. The outflowing warm waters of the rivers or other
-influences may sometimes produce a narrow space comparatively free from
-ice in summer along the shore of the continent and greater islands; but
-everywhere off shore, and never at a great distance, begins a thick
-mass of perpetual ice, which, it is believed, extends across the pole
-like a cap, and reaches on the other side nearly to Petermannland. To
-this has been given the name of the Paleocrystic Sea, or sea of ancient
-ice, and nothing is known of it beyond the blue cliffs of its margin
-that confronts the explorer as he gazes abroad from the hills of the
-Parry Islands or Banks Land, or vainly seeks in some lone vessel north
-of Alaska or Siberia to penetrate its glassy front.
-
-So thoroughly were the islands of this archipelago explored, and so
-unpromising seems further study, that Arctic voyagers have long ceased
-to risk their ships there, and the story of Franklin’s fate was finally
-learned by land travelers. As early as 1854 Dr. Rae and a party of
-Hudson’s Bay Company’s men had traveled over land and ice to King
-William’s Land, proved it an island, and heard stories of the death by
-famine and cold of white men who could be no other than the Franklin
-crew, as was further shown by various relics which Dr. Rae obtained
-from the Eskimos. Dr. Rae claimed and received £10,000 of the reward
-offered by the British government. The next year another party, going
-down the Great Fish River, recovered many other articles from Eskimos
-at the mouth of the river and on Montreal Island. It was evident even
-then that every one had perished in an attempt, nearly successful, to
-reach the mainland at the mouth of this river. Lady Franklin, however,
-despatched an expedition in the _Fox_, under the command of the
-experienced M’Clintock, which at last brought back, not her husband,
-but the satisfaction of knowing fully his fate.
-
-All along the west and south coast remains of articles belonging to
-the ships were found, and skeletons—two of them in a broken boat; and
-finally in a stone cairn a written record that briefly told the tale of
-disaster.
-
-[Illustration: WORKING THROUGH AN ICE-FLOE, IN TOW OF A BERG.]
-
-In 1845-46 Franklin quartered at Beechey Island, on the southeast coast
-of North Devon, after having ascended Wellington Channel to latitude
-77°, and returned west of Cornwallis Island, which was an exceedingly
-successful season’s work. In the autumn of 1846 he had turned toward
-the south, but had been stopped by and frozen into the masses of ice
-that come ceaselessly down M’Clintock Channel and press upon King
-William’s Land. Had he known King William’s Land to be really an island
-he need not have exposed himself to this. During all the summer of 1847
-the ships remained firm in their icy bonds. Sir John Franklin died,
-and Captain Crozier took command. The spring of 1848 brought no hope,
-and in April the ships were abandoned. The crews started southward
-along the shore, dragging two boats (one of which was soon abandoned)
-and many sledges. The Eskimos said the men dropped down one at a time,
-from weakness and hunger; but it is believed that many of them were
-killed by the savages for the sake of what few things they had with
-them—precious articles to those natives. It appears that one of the
-vessels must have been crushed in the ice, and the other stranded on
-the shore of King William’s Land, where it lay for years, forming a
-mine of wealth for the neighboring Eskimos. Some years later Lieutenant
-Schwatka and W. H. Gilder, traveling with Eskimo parties in the region
-near the mouth of the Great Fish River, found the graves of the last
-remnant of the party, and recovered still other relics of this dreadful
-calamity. Let me copy for you here the postscript, written by Crozier
-and Fitzjames, to the short record of their work. It is startlingly
-brief and impressive:
-
-  April 25, 1848. H. M. ships _Terror_ and _Erebus_ were deserted on
-  22nd April, five leagues N. N. W. of this [Point Victory], having
-  been beset since 12th September, 1846. The officers and crews,
-  consisting of 105 souls under the command of Captain F. R. M.
-  Crozier, landed here in lat. 69° 37´ 42´´ N., long. 98° 41´ W. Sir
-  John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss by
-  deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men.
-  We start on to-morrow, 26th April, 1848, for Back’s Fish River.
-
-It would be tedious to attempt to chronicle the almost yearly
-excursions into the north, but a few ought to be spoken of. One such
-has been alluded to—that of Charles Hall, a Cincinnati journalist,—who
-enlisted the aid of the American Geographical Society, and then
-prepared himself by going upon a whaler and spending the winters of
-1860-61 and 1861-1862 among the Eskimos near Cumberland Sound, where he
-found the remains of a stone house built by Frobisher in 1578. Again,
-from 1864 to 1869 he was living with the wandering Eskimo north of
-Hudson’s Bay, preparing himself to undertake an expedition which may
-be said to be the first whose avowed object was to try to reach the
-North Pole. The United States government furnished him the steamer
-_Polaris_, and a small but efficient body of scientific assistants,
-one of whom was Emil Bessels. The _Polaris_ passed through Smith
-Sound, and after completing the exploration of Kennedy Channel, and
-discovering that beyond its expansion into Hall Sound it continued
-straight northeastward, forming Robeson Channel, Hall stopped his ship
-and by sledge-journeys reached Cape Brevoort, above 82° N., whence
-he could see the open polar sea. This was not only far beyond any
-previous northing, but his work added immensely to our knowledge of
-both Grinnell Land and northwestern Greenland, and prepared the way for
-further successes.
-
-This sledge-journey was, however, too great a strain, for he had hardly
-returned to his ship when he sickened and died. The next season (1872)
-Dr. Bessels and Sergeant Mayer reached on foot 82° 09´ N., a few miles
-farther than Hall. This accomplished, an attempt was made to return,
-but the steamer was soon inclosed in the pack, and drifted helplessly
-southward for two months, until off Northumberland Island, when a
-violent gale loosened the pack and nearly destroyed her.
-
-  At length the danger became so great that on October 15th boats and
-  provisions were put on the ice, on which nineteen of the crew had
-  disembarked. Suddenly the ship broke away, and the party on the
-  ice drifted slowly 195 days, and were picked up off the coast of
-  Labrador, in 53° 35´ N., by a whaling steamer 1,300 miles from where
-  they had parted with the _Polaris_. The party in the ship reached
-  Littleton’s Island, where they passed the winter, building two boats
-  from the boards of the vessel, in which they set sail southwards in
-  June, 1873. On the 23d of that month they were picked up by a Dundee
-  whaler, and ultimately reached home.
-
-Only three years before that a very similar experience had happened to
-the smaller ship of a German expedition under Captain Koldewey, of
-which the larger went up the east coast of Greenland to 75½° N., where
-a grim headland was named Cape Bismarck. It is just south of the land
-sighted by Lambert in 1670. The little _Hansa_, however, was crushed
-in the ice near Scoresby Sound. The crew escaped to the floe, where
-they built a house of blocks of patent fuel, filled it with provisions,
-and trusted themselves to the great Arctic current which carried them
-south, at the rate of about sixty-five miles a day at first, until
-finally, in June, 1870, it took them to the Moravian missions near Cape
-Farewell, more than twelve hundred miles from where they were wrecked.
-
-The seas and archipelagoes north of Europe were being questioned, all
-this time, as well as those north of America. The Norwegian fishermen
-had been familiar with Spitzbergen waters from long ago, but it was not
-until 1863 that the group was circumnavigated. The next year Captain
-Tobieson sailed around Northeast Land, and in 1870 Nova Zembla was
-circumnavigated, and the mouth of the Obi reached.
-
-The men who did these feats were sealers or shark-fishers in small
-stanch Norwegian schooners, which flocked in Barentz Sea at this
-period, and they furnished invaluable material, as did the whalers and
-sealers of American and Scotch ports, for the ice-pilots and crews of
-the scientific expeditions which now began to go to the north: moreover
-many of the commanders were trained by amateur service in such vessels.
-It was thus Nordenskjöld began his experiences in 1864. Among these
-earlier expeditions was an Austrian naval lieutenant, Julius von Payer,
-who became notable, not only because he interested a new nation in
-Arctic research, but because of his discoveries. His first experience
-was with the German expedition to Greenland in 1869, and in 1871 he
-and another Austrian navy officer named Weyprecht spent the summer in
-examining the edge of the ice between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla.
-
-Their observations led them to project an expedition to try again at
-that place to penetrate eastward, and effect the Northeast Passage,
-which had been regarded as hopeless for the past hundred years. The
-idea of making an Austro-Hungarian expedition of it aroused great
-enthusiasm in that empire, and Payer and Weyprecht were furnished with
-the large steamer _Tegethoff_, equipped as well as possible, with
-Weyprecht in command, while von Payer was to lead all sledge-parties.
-She reached the northern end of Nova Zembla in time to get into
-comfortable winter quarters, but instead of escaping in the spring was
-kept imprisoned in the ice, drifting steadily northward before the
-prevailing wind until, in October, land was approached, near which
-the ship again became a fixture for the winter of 1873-74. In March
-Payer began to make exploratory journeys, and found that they had
-discovered a group of mountainous islands, separated by broad and deep
-channels, which he named Francis Joseph Land, in honor of the Emperor
-of Austria-Hungary.
-
-[Illustration: A SUMMER SCENE OFF NOVA ZEMBLA]
-
-By this time summer was approaching, when it was plain that the
-_Tegethoff_ must be abandoned, and an attempt made to get home afoot.
-On the 24th of May three boats were placed on sledges, other sledges
-were loaded with provisions, and the ship’s company started on another
-one of those Arctic marches that often end at so sad a goal. Until the
-14th of August they were plodding over the ice before they reached the
-edge of the pack and launched their boats, in which they sailed for
-three weeks before being picked up by a Russian vessel.
-
-This has always been regarded as one of the greatest achievements in
-polar work of this century, not only because of the heroism and skill
-shown, and the new lands discovered, but because it promised so much
-for the future—a promise that has been largely fulfilled.
-
-The next important expedition was another attack upon the Northeast
-Passage, the hope of which would not “down”; and it was under the
-leadership of Professor Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld, a Swedish geologist
-and naturalist of Stockholm, although born in Finland, who had made
-several previous journeys to Greenland, Spitzbergen, etc., which
-were fruitful of scientific results. Then he turned his attention to
-Siberia; and in 1875 and again in 1876 he sailed to the mouth of the
-Yenisei, as also Captain Wiggins of Sunderland, England, was then
-doing, in a profitable trade with the Siberians, which has been kept
-up more or less regularly ever since. These experiences convinced him
-that it was worth while to try once more to work one’s way through the
-Siberian ocean to Bering Strait.
-
-He obtained and outfitted the steamer _Vega_, and arranged that a
-smaller supply-steamer, the _Lena_, should accompany him as far as the
-mouth of the river Lena—a bold proposition in itself, for that was
-a thousand miles beyond the Yenisei. Nevertheless, this program was
-carried out; for leaving Gothenberg on July 4, 1878, a month later they
-were traversing the Kara Sea, and on August 19 passed Cape Chelyuskin,
-which, up to that time, had defied all attempts and has since closed
-the gate to all but the daring Nansen. A week later the mouth of the
-Lena was reached, and the little tender, unloading her coal and other
-stores into the depleted hold of the _Vega_, turned west, and actually
-sailed back to civilization uninjured.
-
-The _Vega_ then hastened on eastward, and came near getting right
-through to Bering Strait in that one season; but this was more than the
-indulgent Arctic gods could grant, and at the end of September the men
-found themselves frozen into the ice off North Cape (where Cook turned
-back in 1778), only one hundred and twenty miles from Bering Strait.
-Here they were near shore, the country was inhabited by Tchuktches—a
-nomadic people, with herds of reindeer, who take the place in Siberia
-of the Eskimos of Arctic America; and the time was well spent in
-gathering a knowledge of these people and their country, and in making
-very valuable collections in zoology and anthropology.
-
-It was not until July 18, 1879, however, that their prison-gates
-opened, and the _Vega_ steamed on. These waters were familiar enough
-to navigators; and Nordenskjöld proceeded straight east, passed down
-through Bering Strait on the next day but one (so near was he), and
-thus easily accomplished that which had baffled men since first it had
-been tried by the unfortunate Willoughby three hundred and twenty-six
-years before.
-
-But though the Northeast Passage had thus been found, it was of no more
-practical value to commerce than the solving of the Northwest Passage
-had been, and the value received from the cruise was in the scientific
-information gained, the more accurate delineation of the coast, and the
-increased knowledge of winds, currents, magnetic phenomena, and the
-behavior of the floating ice-fields on that side of the polar area.
-When at last, however, the _Vega_ had circumnavigated the globe by this
-extraordinary course, returning home through the Suez Canal, as no
-Arctic expedition had ever been expected to do, its commander was made
-a baron, and all his men were loaded with praises and honors, while his
-book, “The Voyage of the _Vega_,” printed in four or five languages,
-spread their fame throughout the world.
-
-Now while the _Vega_ was drifting slowly about northeast of Siberia
-during that early summer of 1879, not only were Schwatka hunting for
-Franklin relics with the Eskimos of King William’s Land, the Danish
-Captain Jansen tracing the northeast coast of Greenland, and Dutch and
-English explorers investigating the neighborhood of Francis Joseph
-Land, but within a few leagues of Nordenskjöld and his men there
-was beginning one of the most dreadful of those tragedies that have
-seared with suffering the track of Arctic exploration since men began
-to pry into the secrets of the frozen North: I mean the story of the
-_Jeannette_.
-
-Many readers of this book will easily remember the intense interest
-which the starting of this expedition created in the United States, for
-it was organized at the suggestion and expense of James Gordon Bennett,
-the proprietor of the New York _Herald_. The government coöperated,
-however, lending from its navy the officers and men needful, and
-otherwise aiding the project. The vessel itself was the steam yacht
-_Pandora_, which had been proved a worthy craft by Sir Allen Young in
-his search for the magnetic pole in 1875, and which Mr. Bennett had
-bought and rechristened.
-
-Supplied with everything science and experience could suggest, the
-_Jeannette_ sailed from San Francisco on July 8, 1879, and missing the
-incoming _Vega_ among the fogs of Bering Sea, passed through into the
-Siberian ocean, bound poleward. The last report of her was that she had
-been seen September 3d steaming toward Wrangell Land, which had been
-sighted by American whalers in 1867, and was generally regarded as of
-continental extent northward. It is now known that De Long intended to
-reach it and winter there; but to his dismay he could not escape from
-the ice-pack, and to his astonishment found himself drifting past
-the northern margin of Wrangell Land, thus proving it an island about
-seventy miles long.
-
-When two years had passed and no tidings had been received, the
-United States government equipped a search expedition in the steamer
-_Rodgers_, commanded by Lieutenant Berry, which in 1881 reached
-and examined Wrangell Land, and then went north farther even than
-Collinson, reaching 73° 44´, the highest point yet attained immediately
-north of Bering Strait, where the paleocrystic ice spreads much farther
-from the pole than on the American side. But he found no trace of
-the _Jeannette_, and himself had a hard time getting home, for the
-_Rodgers_ was burned in her winter quarters.
-
-What then had befallen the lost vessel? She had become beset in the ice
-and drifted with the pack around the north end of Wrangell Island, and
-then west, until at the end of twenty-two months she had been crushed,
-and sunk on June 12, 1881, in latitude 77° 15´ N., and longitude 155
-E. Two small islands, named Jeannette and Henrietta, had been visited
-some distance east of the scene of the catastrophe; but when the crews,
-saving themselves and what little they could on the ice, started to
-drag their boats and sledges homeward, they headed directly south, and
-soon found a new island, named Bennett, which is the northernmost of
-the New Siberia group.
-
-It would be a sad task, were it possible, to relate here the frightful
-hardships of that journey through the fast-gathering Arctic night
-toward the bleak coast of Siberia. Having passed the islands, open
-water was found, and the starving men embarked in their three boats for
-the mouth of the Lena; but soon they were separated in a storm, and
-each one proceeded as best he could. One boat foundered in the first
-gale. Another, in charge of Melville (now engineer-in-chief, U. S. N.),
-reached an eastern mouth of the river and ascended it to a Russian
-village. A third boat, with De Long and others, also reached the Lena
-delta, but only two seamen were able to proceed afoot to Bulun, a
-far-away Russian settlement. Melville heard of this, and made haste to
-start out searching parties, but they were too late. De Long and his
-crew had died of exhaustion, and it was not until the next season that
-their bodies and records were fully recovered.
-
-Nevertheless, as we are assured by experts, the results of this
-unfortunate expedition were important, physically and geographically.
-“They covered some 50,000 square miles of polar ocean, and clearly
-indicate the conditions of an equal area between their line of drift
-and the Asiatic coast.” De Long believed the Siberian ocean to be
-a shallow sea, dotted with islands; and his conclusions have been
-confirmed by the admirable scientific work since of Toll, Bunge, and
-other Europeans who have explored the Liachoff Islands and other places
-in that part of the Arctic realm.
-
-The desire for scientific study of the polar world had now become the
-motive for northern research, though men were still ambitious to reach
-the pole; and when Sir George Nares returned from the great British
-expedition of 1875, to tell how the men of the _Alert_ had reached a
-wintering-point beyond Robeson Channel, on the west coast of Greenland,
-in latitude 82° 27´ N., and that Markham and a sledge-party had gone
-about one degree farther (to 83° 20´ 26´´ N.), greater pride was felt
-in this fact, perhaps, than in the careful observations and collections
-that the ships had made. This remained the advance record until the
-memorable feat of Lieutenant Lockwood of the American Greely expedition
-eight years later.
-
-This expedition was one of several acting in concert, according to
-a scheme suggested by Weyprecht, and perfected at international
-congresses of interested men meeting at Hamburg in 1879 and at St.
-Petersburg in 1882. This plan was for the establishment by various
-governments of a ring of stations as far within the Arctic circle as
-practicable, where simultaneous daily observations of the weather,
-magnetic conditions, tides, currents, etc., might be made. The
-arrangement was begun in the summer of 1883, and observing stations
-were established by Austria on Jan Mayen Island; by Denmark at
-Godthaab, Greenland; by Germany on Cumberland Bay, west of Davis
-Straits; by Great Britain at Great Slave Lake, Canada; by Holland at
-the mouth of the Yenisei; by Norway at Alten Fjiord, Norway; by Russia
-at the mouth of the Lena, and on Nova Zembla; by Sweden on Spitzbergen;
-and by the United States at Point Barrow, Alaska, and, farthest north
-of all, Lady Franklin Bay, Greenland. Nothing need be said about most
-of these stations—all were successful except the Dutch; but to the
-last-named belongs a story that Americans will not forget.
-
-The command of the Lady Franklin Bay Station was assigned to Lieutenant
-A. W. Greely—not a naval lieutenant, but, like Schwatka, a cavalry
-officer, then assigned to duty in the Signal Service, to which (because
-it then supervised the Weather Bureau) the government had intrusted
-this matter. A steamer easily conveyed Greely and his party to Lady
-Franklin Bay, and left them there with a good house ready to be set
-up, and supplies of all sorts for two years. The prescribed series of
-observations with barometers and thermometers, wind-gages, tide-gages,
-magnetic instruments and all the rest, were at once begun, and two
-winters passed comfortably enough. Dogs and Eskimo drivers had been
-obtained, and several journeys were made, of which the most important
-was Lockwood’s advance toward the pole, of which an account has
-been succinctly supplied by General Greely himself in his admirable
-“Handbook of Arctic Discoveries.”
-
-[Illustration: SCENERY OF GRINNELL LAND AND THE ARCTIC SEA.]
-
-Lieutenant J. B. Lockwood, one of the principal assistants, who had
-already displayed great skill and energy in sledging, even in prolonged
-temperature as low as 81° F. below freezing, undertook a long exploring
-trip up the Greenland coast, to or beyond Cape Britannia. A large
-party went with him at first, but gradually men were sent back, after
-establishing supply-depots. “The journey onward was marked by severe
-storms, rough ice, broken sledges, snow-blindness, minor injuries,
-and—worst of all for loaded sledges—soft, deep snow.” At last, some
-distance north of Cape Bryant, all turned back except Lockwood,
-Sergeant Brainard, and an Eskimo, Christiansen, who, with twenty-five
-days’ rations, pushed on. In five and one half days they had reached
-Cape Britannia—the farthest north of the Nares expedition—82° 20´
-N. Halting here only long enough to study the landscape from its
-summit, and make sure of the remarkable fact that this northern end
-of Greenland is free from the ice-cap, whose northern limit is about
-lat. 82° N., they rounded a cape, and crossing channel after channel
-filled with ice, which showed that all this district is an archipelago,
-reached on May 10th Mary Murray Island, 83° 19´ N. “A violent gale
-delayed them sixty-three hours, the cold exhausting them physically
-and the delay mentally. If weather forbade travel, life must be
-sustained; but they tasted insufficient food only at intervals of
-fifteen, twenty-four, and nineteen hours—the last as clearing weather
-made progress possible. Floes so high that the sledge was lowered by
-dog-traces, ice so broken that the ax cleared the way, and widening
-water-cracks in increasing numbers impeded progress. But, despite all
-obstacles, they reached, May 13, 1882, Lockwood Island, 83° 24´ N.,
-42°, 45´ W., the farthest of their journey, and the highest north [by
-land], then or now.”
-
-They could see land several miles northeast, which they named Cape
-Washington, the highest known land, and toward the north could overlook
-a polar sea to within three hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Even
-here plants were numerous, and foxes, hares, lemmings, and ptarmigans
-existed. The three heroic travelers returned safely, reaching
-headquarters on June 3d. Another expedition by Lockwood and his two
-companions explored and located the west coast of mountainous and
-glacier-girt Grinnell Land, where the musk-ox and Eskimo hunters range
-to the northern border.
-
-The summer of 1883 brought no relief-ship, and the plan of escape must
-be put into execution at once. A ship had, in fact, tried to reach
-Greely in 1882, but, failing, had left supplies of provisions at Cape
-Sabine and elsewhere. In 1883 another relief expedition sent north was
-dreadfully mis-managed, and finally the ship itself was lost, and,
-instead of leaving supplies, took away all that had been stored at Cape
-Sabine—the precise point where they were to be needed.
-
-Leaving Lady Franklin Bay in August in open boats, the party managed,
-after desperate exertions, to get near Cape Sabine, and safely landed
-on Bedford Pim Island, on the northwestern shore of Smith Sound,
-October 15, 1883. Of the misery that followed, let Greely himself tell
-us:
-
-  Winter had begun, the polar night was imminent, clothing in rags,
-  fuel wanting, and forty days’ rations must tide over 250 days, till
-  help could come. The main party put up a hut of rocks, canvas, boat-
-  and snow-slabs, while selected men scoured the coasts for caches,
-  sought land-game, and watched seal-holes, until utter darkness drove
-  all to the hut. Scientific observations were unremittingly made,
-  amusements devised, a spring campaign planned, and the returning
-  sun found only one dead. Efforts to cross Smith Sound failed, and
-  a hunting trip to the west found a new (Schley) land, but no game.
-  Finally game came so inadequately that food failed, and one by one
-  men died—Jens seal-hunting, and Rice striving to bring in a cache.
-  Courage and solidarity continued; and if Greely gave to the maimed
-  Ellison double food while it lasted, he did not hesitate to order
-  in writing the execution of a man serving under an assumed name of
-  Henry, who repeatedly stole sealskin thongs, the only remaining
-  food. Flowers, plants, seaweed, and lichens eked out life for the
-  six, till June 22, 1884, when the relief-ships, _Thetis_ and _Bear_,
-  under Captain W. S. Schley and Commander W. H. Emory, rescued them.
-  Records, instruments, and collections were saved to tell the story
-  of an expedition that failed not in aught intrusted to it, and whose
-  members perished through others.
-
-To another piece of brilliant work, that of Lieutenant R. E. Peary, U.
-S. N., I can give only a few words, because, like so much else that
-might be said of Arctic researches, it was by land rather than by
-sea. By extraordinary courage, skill, and endurance, he twice crossed
-northern Greenland, showed that it is an island having a northern shore
-free from inland ice in about 82° north latitude, and made stronger
-Greely’s conclusion that the lands visited and seen by Lockwood, north
-of Cape Britannia, are detached islands. Peary’s work may be said to
-have completed the map of the continental boundary of the Arctic Ocean,
-but he is still busy there.
-
-Of Nansen, on the contrary, I ought to say as much as I can, because
-his extraordinary voyage in the _Fram_ was perhaps more purely
-an examination of the Arctic _Sea_ than any other ever made. Dr.
-Fridtjoff Nansen was a young Norwegian who had already made his mark
-in Greenland, where, soon after 1880, articles began to be found that
-had belonged to the _Jeannette_, and apparently must have drifted
-thence from where she was lost off Siberia. This was only a part of the
-indications that convinced Dr. Nansen that a current flowed across the
-unknown polar space from the neighborhood of Alaska to the northeast
-coast of Greenland, and thence became the great Arctic current that we
-recognize south of Iceland. He argued that if a vessel could find this
-current north of eastern Siberia, she would be moved with it until she
-emerged into the Atlantic. Incidentally she might drift directly over
-the pole.
-
-With this in view, he raised funds to build and equip a small wooden
-vessel, furnished with both steam and sails, which was so shaped by
-the roundness of her bottom, and so amazingly braced and strengthened
-within, that before any “nips” of the ice would crush her, the pressure
-would lift her out of water—as, in fact, happened many times in the
-course of her wonderful excursion. Nansen chose twelve companions,[3]
-and though some of them were educated men of science, others skilful
-sea-captains, and others common sailors, all lived and worked together
-in one cabin as brothers—the happiest and healthiest lot of men that
-ever ventured into the hyperborean kingdom of desolation.
-
-Leaving Norway in July, 1893, he struggled through the Kara Sea,
-and it was not until late in September, 1894, that he found himself
-permanently frozen into the great polar pack, north of the New Siberian
-Islands; but even then he was neither so far north nor so far west as
-he hoped to get, and feared that he was south of his supposed current.
-For the story of the strange life led by those thirteen men on that
-drifting ship, safe, abundantly provisioned, dry, warm, lighted by
-electricity (power for the dynamos being gained by a windmill), I can
-only refer you to Dr. Nansen’s book, “Farthest North,” one of the
-most interesting Arctic volumes ever penned. Turning, zigzagging, now
-advancing and again retreating as the constantly moving ice swayed here
-and there under the pressure of wind or the dragging of currents, they
-nevertheless made a gradual progress westward.
-
-By March they had reached a point near the crossing of the 70th
-meridian and 85th parallel, and were still fixed in the ice. Then
-Nansen, taking with him Lieutenant Johansen, started north by
-dog-sledges, in an attempt to reach the pole. They could take very few
-supplies of any sort, and how far north they would be able to travel
-must depend upon their ability to return, not to the _Fram_, which
-would drift on, but to the islands of Francis Joseph Land, far away
-south. The ice, bad at first, grew worse as they proceeded, being one
-long stretch of hummocks and jagged ditches, with now and then a lane
-of open water around which they would toil in misery only to find a
-worse one ahead. On April 7th it became certain that they must turn
-back. This was “farthest north,” indeed—just above the 86th degree,
-hardly 275 miles from the North Pole. Then it was a race against death
-by cold, or drowning, or starvation. One by one the dogs were killed to
-furnish food for the remainder. At last, after almost superhuman labors
-and thrilling escapes from freezing and drowning and the attacks of
-famished bears, they reached Francis Joseph Land, and spent a winter in
-a hut made out of stones, earth, and raw walrus hides. The next spring
-they plodded on, and by good chance found the camp of the Jackson
-Harmsworth surveying party (which a few days later would have gone away
-in its steamer), by whom Nansen and Johansen were carried to Norway in
-August, 1896.
-
-A week later the _Fram_ came in, with every one well and hearty, having
-emerged from the ice just northwest of Spitzbergen.
-
-Since Nansen’s return another Scandinavian, S. A. Andrée, with two
-companions, has disappeared into this same desert of ice and silence,
-in a balloon carrying a boat, sledge, tent, and various supplies.
-It was his intention to reach the pole if possible, and to do
-whatever else circumstances permitted. Since his departure, on July
-10, 1897, from Spitzbergen, he has not been heard from, except by a
-pigeon-message two days later.
-
-
-THE SOUTH POLE
-
-We have followed up to date the history of adventurous and scientific
-exploration of the hardly yielding, yet steadily narrowed, circles
-of unknown coasts and waters about the North Pole. Let us now see
-what, thus far, has been done to wrest from the ocean and ice of its
-Antarctic antipodes the secrets of the South Pole.
-
-[Illustration: A PENGUIN-ROOST ON THE BEACHES OF VICTORIA LAND.
-
-Drawn by the Antarctic explorer Borchgrevink.]
-
-Almost three hundred years ago the existence of islands far to the
-southward of any continents became known to navigators, who were driven
-thither by bad weather, and little by little was added to the map of
-this desolate region; but it was not until 1772 that any one went into
-that terrible Antarctic sea for the express purpose of a survey. This
-man was the intrepid Captain Cook, and though he sailed a third of the
-way around the globe in his efforts to find an entrance through the icy
-barrier, he could never penetrate beyond 71° south latitude, which is
-equal to North Cape, or the town of Upernavik, in the Arctic region.
-Later captains did little better, until 1841, when Sir James Ross, in
-his ships _Erebus_ and _Terror_,—the same vessels which afterward met
-their destruction with the ill-fated Franklin expedition,—skirted the
-edge of the thick ice that everywhere clothed the land, though it was
-midsummer, and finally reached the base of the southernmost land yet
-known on the globe—a magnificent mountain-chain stretching away to the
-south from latitude 78° 10´.
-
-The most conspicuous point of all this range of polar mountains, which
-rises from an unexplored continent or great island called Victoria
-Land, is the volcano Mt. Erebus. It was in eruption at the time of
-Ross’s visit, and the explorer tries to tell us of the splendor of its
-display when the wide glistening waste of snow and the deep blue of
-the ocean and the starry sky are lit up by the column of fire hurled
-thousands of feet heavenward from its crater: but who can picture the
-grandeur of such a scene! This volcano is about 12,400 feet high, and
-an extinct neighbor, Mt. Terror, is still higher; while a third peak,
-Mt. Melbourne, exceeds 15,000 feet in altitude, and like all the rest
-is covered with everlasting snow and glaciers from the tempestuous
-water’s edge to its lonely crest.
-
-Meager as this information is, it is about all we know of the surface
-of the globe within the Antarctic circle; and it will be extremely
-difficult to learn much more. In a latitude much farther from the
-pole than that where in the north vegetation is abundant, and men and
-animals live all the year round, the severity of the Antarctic climate
-cuts off all life, and constantly seals the water under a cap of ice.
-The coasts and outlying islands thus far examined appear to be wholly
-volcanic, often composed of nothing but alternate layers of ashes
-and ice; but the _Challenger_ staff dredged up from the edge of the
-ice south of the middle of the Indian Ocean pieces of granite-like
-and other rocks, such as belong to land regularly formed; so that
-probably the whole uplift does not consist of volcanic materials; and,
-furthermore, rocks containing fossil plants have been found on some of
-the southernmost islands which show that in past ages—the period of
-the coal deposits—the climate of that end of the world was mild enough
-to support forests of trees and, doubtless, a large variety of herbage
-and animals. Now most of the coast is unapproachable on account of a
-border of sea-ice, or else cliffs of moving land-ice (glaciers) that
-give off the flat, table-topped icebergs characteristic of the south
-polar waters. No trace of any land animal—except visiting sea-fowl—has
-been found, and only a little of the simplest plants (lichens); nor is
-this surprising when we learn that the highest noonday heat of summer
-is only a little above the freezing-point.
-
-Why this intense cold and dreadful desolation exists so much farther
-from the pole in the southern than in the northern hemisphere, I need
-hardly explain to you; for you will recall that in the north the
-continents are so broad as to form almost an unbroken wall about the
-narrow polar sea, confining its cold waters, warming the air by wide
-radiation, and guiding the heated flood of the Gulf Stream straight
-into the northern sea. In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand,
-an immense breadth of ocean south of latitude 40° is broken by no
-land of any account, and the southward flowing warm water from the
-equator becomes spread out so thin upon the vast surface that it is
-rapidly chilled. It is now generally believed, as has been hinted,
-that the south polar region is a continental mass, deeply buried in an
-ice-sheet that is ever fed in the center as fast as it wastes away at
-the circumference; for the prevailing winds there tend toward the pole
-from all sides, and carry loads of moisture to be condensed and fall in
-ceaseless snows.
-
-[Illustration: ICE-CLIFFS AND TABLE-TOPPED BERGS, CHARACTERISTIC OF THE
-ANTARCTIC REGION.]
-
-The Antarctic seas, however, are by no means lifeless, but abound not
-only in fishes,—cod are said to throng in these waters in prodigious
-numbers,—but several varieties of whales, dolphins, and their kin
-(which will be described in one of the later chapters), and many kinds
-of seals, notably the huge sea-elephant, now becoming rare elsewhere.
-Then, too, the Antarctic islands and headlands are the resort of
-enormous flocks of certain sea-birds, all different from the Arctic
-species of their families, which subsist upon the fishes and less
-creatures in the water, and go to the lonely shores outside the ice-cap
-only for rest and to make their nests. Of all these the penguins are
-most numerous and most hardy, and a whole chapter might easily be given
-to their quaint appearance and quainter ways. It also appears probable
-that certain migratory birds—especially beach-feeding kinds—regularly
-visit the Antarctic continent in summer from Patagonia, and breed there.
-
-Now what has been gained by all the expense, exertion, and hardship
-of polar exploration? What has been the charm that has led wise and
-brave men to overcome terrific obstacles, and turn again with deeper
-and deeper longings toward the mystic icy regions? Lieutenant Maury has
-given one answer: “There icebergs are framed and glaciers launched.
-There the tides have their cradle: the whales their nursery. There
-the winds complete their circuits, and the currents of the sea their
-round in the wonderful system of interoceanic circulation. There the
-Aurora Borealis is lighted up, and the trembling needle brought to
-rest; and there, too, in the mazes of that mystic circle, terrestrial
-forces of occult power and vast influence upon the well-being of man
-are continually at play.... Noble daring has made Arctic ice and waters
-classic ground. It is no feverish excitement nor vain ambition that
-leads man there. It is a higher feeling, a holier motive, a desire
-to look into the works of creation, to comprehend the economy of our
-planet, and to grow wiser and better by the knowledge.”
-
-To polar explorers we owe not only the discovery of the waters,
-coasts, and archipelagoes that now are accurately outlined upon our
-maps within the Arctic and Antarctic circles, but vast and valuable
-products—whale-fisheries, seal-fisheries, cod-fisheries, and many other
-additions to the wealth of the world from the sea, while the Arctic
-lands have yielded furs and other valuable things in great quantity.
-The study of the people living under those adverse northern conditions
-has been highly instructive, assisting us to reconstruct the life in
-the primitive world; and what we have learned from the records of
-the Arctic rocks has thrown a bright and unexpected light upon the
-antiquity of the globe.
-
-To studies of the ocean and atmosphere in very high latitudes science
-is largely indebted for new facts in magnetism, in the movements of
-the air and causes of climate, in the formation and behavior of ice
-and icebergs, in the action of tides and ocean-currents, and in many
-other departments of knowledge, all of which have been made of use
-especially to the navigator. Nor has this cost over much. Attention
-has been called to every casualty, and the romantic light of adventure
-has brought into high relief all the hardships and sometimes horrors
-of Arctic experience; but the records show that the average of loss
-and suffering in Arctic work is not greater than that of ordinary
-seafaring and naval careers. Sir Leopold M’Clintock has stated publicly
-that during the thirty-six years when Great Britain was most active
-in polar research, she lost only one expedition and 128 persons
-out of forty-two successive expeditions sent out, and never lost a
-sledge-party out of a hundred that made overland journeys.
-
-After all, no doubt, the best result has been the human heroism
-displayed, and the human sympathy developed. “There are,” exclaims
-Professor Nourse, “and ever will be, fair fruits born out of such acts
-of high aspiration, energy, and fortitude, in those who have gone out,
-and in their liberal supporters; exemplars for the lifting up of the
-discouraged, the education of the young. Certainly volunteers for the
-paths of discovery will offer themselves until the fullest additions to
-the domain of science have had their ingathering.”
-
-[Illustration: EAGER TO BE FIRST ASHORE IN A NEW LAND.]
-
-[Illustration: DRAWN BY HOWARD PYLE. ENGRAVED BY M. HAIDER.
-
-THE “CONSTITUTION’S” LAST FIGHT.]
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[3] The success of this most hazardous venture, although its crew
-numbered _thirteen_, is equal to the success of Columbus’s first
-voyage, although it began on _Friday_! “Luck” has no show when it is
-pitted against pluck.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES
-
-
-PART I—WOODEN WALLS, FROM SALAMIS TO TRAFALGAR
-
-Naval warfare, properly speaking, begins with the battle of Salamis,
-480 B. C., when the Greek fleet, under the guidance of Themistocles,
-destroyed or put to flight a horde of twelve hundred Persian vessels,
-and saved Athens, to become the foundation of a strong nation.
-
-Of these ships at Salamis we know very little, except that they were
-large, open, or partly open, rowboats, having platforms at the stern
-and prow, and perhaps amidships in some cases, where soldiers might
-stand and discharge their arrows out of the way of the rowers beneath
-them, or leap aboard the enemy’s boats whenever they could be reached.
-They were, in short, early types of the galleys which subsequently
-became vessels of war as powerful and serviceable, under the conditions
-they were intended to meet, as are our battle-ships to-day, and
-probably safer as a fighting-place for their crews.
-
-That from rowboats rather than from sail-boats should have been
-developed the highest type of Mediterranean war-vessel of ancient times
-is not surprising when one remembers the light and variable winds of
-that region, the usually smooth seas, the abundance of harbors, and,
-above all, the need of having the vessels under complete control when
-all fighting had to be done at short range—chiefly by ramming and
-boarding, in fact. It must be remembered, too, that labor was cheap;
-and it was considered that the most proper and economical—not to say
-humane—use to which prisoners of war could be put was to make them
-rowers in public ships, while enough remained to be sold as slaves to
-the owners of private yachts and privateering galleys. One may imagine
-a worse fate than this.
-
-The earliest war-vessels of the eastern Mediterranean—those of Homer’s
-time, for instance—seem to have been long and rather narrow rowboats,
-the best of which had two tiers of oars, one above the other, the
-lower, shorter tier working through oval holes in the side, and the
-upper in notches or thole-pins on the gunwale. This left the upper
-rowers exposed, and hence such vessels were called _aphract_, or
-“unfenced”; and it was not until the Greeks began to become prominent
-that the bulwarks were raised high enough to protect all the rowers,
-and war-vessels generally became _cataphract_, or “fenced.”
-
-It appears that in very early times war-ships (_biremes_) with not
-only two tiers or banks of oars, but even those (_triremes_) with
-three banks, were used; and the trireme became the type of the most
-numerous and effective vessels of the Greek and Roman navies in their
-prime. And as weight and power gradually increased, the crushing power
-of collision began to be utilized, and ramming came in as a more and
-more important feature in naval tactics. As the Greeks seem to have
-first applied these new ideas, it is quite likely that their success at
-Salamis was due to these improvements. The arrangement was this:
-
-From the side of the vessel (inside) projected three rows of benches, a
-yard apart, horizontally supported at their inner ends by timbers that
-slanted toward the stern at such an angle that the top seat of each row
-was exactly above the bottom seat of the row behind it. The oars of
-the top tier (_thranite_) were about fourteen feet long, those of the
-middle tier (_zygite_) about ten and one half feet, and the lowermost
-one (_thalamite_) seven and one half feet. Each oar was so nearly
-balanced in its oar-port as to work in the easiest manner, tied there
-by a thong and surrounded by a loose sleeve of leather which kept out
-the water. Each one of the lowermost oars was worked by a single man,
-the middle ones by two, and those of the third tier by three or four,
-as they were of great length.
-
-In later times larger vessels were invented for special
-purposes—four-banked (_quadriremes_), five-banked (_quinquiremes_),
-and so on, even up to one of forty banks; but as we are unable to
-understand how it was possible for more than five or six tiers of oars
-to be operated, we may leave these extraordinary galleys to special
-students.[4]
-
-The structure of these vessels gave them the greatest strength
-combined with lightness. They had very strong keels and stems, the
-latter peculiarly braced; and along their sides ran waling-pieces, or
-fore-and-aft bracing timbers, the lowermost curving inward forward,
-until they met in front of the stem at the water-line, where they were
-braced by massive timbers, and prolonged into a sharp three-toothed
-spur, of which the middle tooth was the longest, reaching out perhaps
-ten feet. This was covered with metal, usually bronze, and formed the
-_beak_.
-
-“Above it, but projecting less beyond the stem-post, was the
-_procmbolion_, or second beak, in which the prolongation of the upper
-set of waling-pieces met. This was generally fashioned into the figure
-of a ram’s head, also covered with metal.... These bosses, when a
-vessel was rammed, completed the work of destruction begun by the sharp
-beak at the water-level, giving a racking blow which caused it to heel
-over and so eased it off the beak, releasing the latter before the
-weight of the sinking vessel could come upon it.”
-
-[Illustration: HAMILCAR’S “STAIRWAY OF THE GALLEYS,” AT CARTHAGE.]
-
-The stem was often carried up into a curving ornament called the
-_acrostolion_, beneath which was a stout-walled deck-space for sailors
-or the fighting-men to do their work; and the stern-post similarly
-supported a lofty, richly ornamented structure (_aplustron_), arching
-over the officers’ quarters.
-
-Platforms extended up and down the center of the ship between the
-rowers; and over their heads was a deck having walls or bulwarks where
-the fighting-men and their various “engines” stood. In addition to
-this an external defended gallery for soldiers and boarders usually
-ran along the outside of the bulwarks above the oars; and awnings of
-rawhide were stretched over all to ward off grappling-irons.
-
-It must not be forgotten, however, that these galleys also had three
-pole-masts, and certain sails—probably a huge split lug, with possibly
-a square topsail on the mainmast, while the fore- and mizzenmasts
-carried lateens. At the top of each stick was a round, protected cage
-filled with archers and slingers—the prototype of our “military mast.”
-
-Nor are the size and force of these Greek and Roman men-of-war to be
-despised. The ordinary trireme had a crew of 200 to 225 men in all, 174
-of whom were rowers. The space for cabins and stowage must have been
-little, but this was of small account, since the war-galleys rarely
-undertook long cruises, their tactics being a rush and a sharp fight,
-and then a quick return to harbor, where it was the practice to draw
-the lighter galleys up on shore each night. The transportation of the
-ships across the isthmus of Corinth was not, then, so astonishing a
-feat as it is sometimes called.
-
-Rome’s experience, however, gained in war and in suppressing the
-Levantine pirates, taught her to abandon the heavy, many-banked,
-unwieldy vessels she had at first developed from Greek and Carthaginian
-models, and to trust to a much lighter, swifter, and more manageable
-style, with far less upper structure and rigging, and having only two
-banks of oars. These were called Liburnian galleys. With this change
-came naturally one of tactics, capture by chase and boarding taking the
-place of the earlier attempt to crush by ramming and overriding the
-antagonist.
-
-The armament comprised not only as many soldiers with bows and javelins
-as could find room in action, but various machines of offense and
-defense, such as catapults hurling huge stones or marble grape-shot,
-spearheaded rams or huge knives that could be run out against an
-enemy’s hull or rigging, arrangements for smashing the enemy’s decks,
-caldrons swung at yard-arms, holding burning pitch or oil to be poured
-upon the foe, and often cranes (_corvi_), provided with grapples that,
-if one could be made fast, would lift an adversary out of water, and
-turn him upside down. No more vivid picture of the life in cruise and
-battle of a Roman man-of-war’s man is known to me than that penned by
-General Lew Wallace in “Ben Hur,” but I cannot, of course, transfer
-all of it to my pages, as I should like to do, and an extract here and
-there would only spoil the pleasure in store for you in re-reading it
-all.
-
-Of medieval naval warfare in the Mediterranean, the struggles between
-the weak “principalities and powers” that followed the decay of Rome
-and lasted for a dozen centuries, we know very little. There is more
-obscurity here than even elsewhere in the dim history of the dark
-ages. It is evident, however, that not much change took place in naval
-architecture. The Byzantine empire succeeded to Rome as mistress of the
-seas, and we know that in the ninth century the Byzantine emperors were
-still building biremes (then called _dromones_) armed with tubes for
-spouting Greek fire. It should be noted that boats having only a single
-bank of oars came now to be called galleys; and this is the first and
-proper use of the word, though popularly it is now (or until recently
-was) applied to any large many-oared boat.
-
-[Illustration: A COMBAT OF ROMAN GALLEYS (BIREMES).]
-
-With the introduction of gunpowder and cannon into naval vessels,
-the ornamental top-works—a picturesque relic of which remains in the
-Venetian gondola of to-day—disappeared, as we see when the clear
-light of history begins to shine on the fleets of Venice and Genoa,
-when these cities were leaders of the world in navigation. Turkey—the
-successor of the old Byzantine empire and of the Greek power—was
-then, as now, the great enemy of the west, but in those days it was
-aggressive. Its fleets were strong and well manned, and they threatened
-to cross the Adriatic and fasten the baneful grasp of the Moslem upon
-Italy in revenge for the persecution of the Moors in Spain. Perhaps
-they would have done so had not John of Austria, admiral of the
-allied navies of Spain, Venice, and Rome, won that great victory in
-the harbor of Lepanto, near the isthmus of Corinth, which destroyed
-nearly the whole Turkish fleet, and released fifteen thousand Christian
-galley-slaves. This was in October, 1571, and it saved the West from
-being overrun by the barbarous East, as exactly fifteen and a half
-centuries before it had been saved near Actium, a famous promontory on
-the northwestern coast of Greece, where Octavius defeated the forces of
-Antony and Cleopatra.
-
-It is doubtful whether the ships that fought in the later battle
-were much different in either build or rig from those of the earlier
-conflict, but their decks no more gleamed with men in armor, and in
-place of catapult, crane, and caldron were cannonades and falconets,
-arquebuses and hand-grenades. Perhaps, however, they had already taken
-on more of that long, low shape characterizing later the French and
-Italian galleys, common enough in Mediterranean ports up to about one
-hundred years ago, which differed mainly from the ancient ones in their
-use of much longer oars or sweeps, balanced upon a sort of extended
-outrigger or shelf projecting from the vessel’s side. The galleass of
-which we hear in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was a large
-war-ship of this style, which foreshadowed the Atlantic ships, to be
-spoken of presently, in having castellated structures fore and aft,
-in which were mounted sometimes twenty guns; besides its two or three
-lateen-rigged masts, it often had thirty-two sweeps on each side, each
-about forty-five feet long, and handled with a long, slow stroke by
-five or six men—in France mainly convicts “condemned to the galleys.”[5]
-
-Such vessels continued to be used by the Spaniards, Maltese, Italians,
-and Turks long after they had been abandoned by the French navy,
-but latterly, after the suppression of piracy, in which they were
-of especial service, for the conveyance of important personages and
-occasions of ceremony rather than for practical service; and in the
-state barge of the Doge of Venice, brought out annually to this day
-at the ceremony of re-wedding Venice to the Adriatic, we have a
-magnificent relic of these stately craft.
-
-[Illustration: TYPE OF VENETIAN GALLEY.]
-
-But such boats were adapted only to the comparatively calm and simple
-navigation of the Mediterranean; and although imitated in the similar
-waters of the eastern Baltic, they never flourished north of Spain.
-When they gradually disappeared, their successor inside the gates of
-Gibraltar was the xebec, which began to appear under Arab or Spanish
-control in the seventeenth century; this was supposed to be able to
-withstand any weather, and carried from fourteen to twenty-two guns
-on deck, with small ports for oars between the guns. A picturesque
-relative was the Portuguese muleta.
-
-The English liked this kind of vessel on account of its strong sailing
-qualities, but when they took it into their own stormy waters they
-found it necessary to raise its sides to fit them for breasting
-the high seas that roll in the open Atlantic or are tossed by the
-contending tides of the English Channel, and developed out of it a
-style of swift and handy vessel called a frigate.
-
-During all these “middle” ages the northern nations had been sailing
-and fighting on the sea as well as the southerners. Stories of sturdy
-battles have come down in tradition and in such chronicles as those of
-Froissart; but those old conflicts seem to have produced little change
-in ship-building or armament until the experience and wisdom brought
-back by the Crusaders began to spread abroad even in the half-savage
-North, and to produce that revival of learning which by and by was to
-make such striking changes in western Europe; and here the leaders are
-Englishmen.
-
-[Illustration: FORECASTLE OF THE “GREAT HARRY” (“GRÂCE DE DIEU”).]
-
-In those days no national navies, properly speaking, existed in
-England, France, or northward. When a monarch wished to transport
-troops by water to some other land, or make a naval expedition or
-campaign, he fitted out the ships that belonged to the crown as the
-king’s personal property, and compelled his subjects to furnish the
-rest, just as his feudal provinces and cities and lords were expected
-to equip and bring to his standard any land forces required. It was to
-systematize this method somewhat in England that William the Conqueror
-“established the Cinque Ports, and gave them certain privileges on
-condition of their furnishing 52 ships, with 24 men in each, for 15
-days, in cases of emergency.” Now and then, at first, Englishmen were
-disposed to resist the “arrest” of ships, which might easily mean the
-ruin of their business; and special laws had to be made to quell this
-reluctance. Another quaint and significant feature of that practice
-was this: In every fleet one or more ships were set apart as “royal,”
-and either the king or his representatives occupied them with court
-ceremony to carry out the fiction of royal dominion over the sea as
-well as upon the land. It naturally followed in England that after her
-navy had shown its power, and signalized it especially by a brilliant
-victory over Spain in 1380, Edward III should have assumed as an
-additional title “King of the Seas”—an act which had far-reaching
-consequences.
-
-During the fifteenth century something like an established navy was
-foreshadowed; but it was not until the reign of Henry VII, when, at
-the end of the fifteenth century, the whole world was exploring the
-oceans and awakening to the importance of sea power, that the first
-vessel, properly called a national war-ship, was built, equipped,
-manned, and sustained at government expense by England. This was the
-_Great Harry_—a floating fortress rather than a ship; for, with her
-towering, overweighted “castles” fore and aft, she was unseaworthy, and
-came near being sunk by a slight rolling which poured the water into
-her lower ports.
-
-But a better known “_Great Harry_” was the _Henri Grâce de Dieu_, built
-by Henry VIII. This king was the real founder of the British navy,
-providing for it many good ships, dock-yards, trained officers, and
-regularly enlisted crews. The advantage of this organization and the
-superiority of English seamanship were demonstrated in the next reign
-by the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
-
-England was then at war with Spain, and Philip II thought to end the
-matter by means of the greatest expedition ever heard of. It began to
-be prepared in 1587 under the title of the Most Fortunate Armada,[6]
-but an English squadron under Drake attacked the rendezvous at Cadiz,
-destroyed over one hundred vessels and huge quantities of stores, and
-then so ravaged the neighboring coasts as to delay Spain’s project for
-a whole season.
-
-In midsummer of 1588, however, after an unlucky start, in which it
-was driven back by storms, the dreaded Armada appeared in the English
-Channel, like a close flock of huge birds drifting along the British
-coast. It consisted of about 130 ships, seven of which exceeded 1000
-tons burden, and numerous small craft, and was armed with nearly 3000
-cannon. Its commander was the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was a most
-incompetent man for the post, and it bore, besides nearly 10,000
-sailors and galley-slaves, over 10,000 soldiers; but this naval force
-was not intended to attack England until after it had ferried over from
-Belgium the Spanish army of the Duke of Parma.
-
-To such a force as this England opposed a miserably small fleet—only
-34 vessels that could be called ships; but she hastily armed as many
-more smaller ones as she could, amid great fright and excitement, until
-finally Admiral Howard commanded 80 or 90 ships and boats. There was no
-deficiency in his men, however,—the pick of English “sea-dogs” was at
-his call; and among the leaders of the pack were men we have already
-met elsewhere—Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Martin Frobisher, and others.
-
-What a sight it must have been on that August day as these ships,
-flying the huge banners of Castile, standing high out of the water,
-with lofty “castles” forward and aft, gaudy with carving and color,
-the light rippling here from silken pennants and flashing there
-from shining cannon or huge poop-lanterns, moved past the southern
-headlands of England, watched by half-raging, half-fearful crowds! And
-how mystified and indignant must these watching country people have
-been when Admiral Howard, their only defender, calmly let the Armada
-sail by Plymouth, where the English fleet lay hid in the Solent, and
-Captain Drake coolly insisted upon finishing a game of bowls before he
-would go down to his waiting frigate.
-
-[Illustration: STYLE OF SHIPS IN THE TIME OF THE ARMADA.]
-
-But these captains knew what they were about. In those days, as now,
-in fighting with sailing-vessels the advantage is usually with the
-one who attacks from the windward side; for then he can manœuver his
-vessel, whereas his enemy, heading toward the wind, can do so only with
-difficulty if at all, and hence cannot easily take a good position or
-escape from a bad one. Howard, therefore, waited until the closely
-crowded squadrons of Spain had passed beyond him up the Channel, when
-he issued from Plymouth harbor, bore down upon their rear from the
-windward, and proceeded, as one of the reports expressed it, to “pluck
-their feathers.”
-
-Then began some wonderful days of sea history and naval schooling. The
-Spanish vessels were floating castles armed with heavy guns and crowded
-with soldiers armed with muskets and “harquebuses of crock,”—that is,
-great blunderbusses supported upon a portable rest. They kept in a
-close crowd, like a phalanx of old Swiss infantry, and supposed that
-the English would move against them in another dense raft, and that
-they would fight from deck to deck of grappled ships as if they were on
-land.
-
-But the English knew better. They had few ships as large—the _Triumph_,
-1100 tons, was the biggest—or guns as heavy as the Spaniards’.
-Instead of attacking in a solid mass, therefore, they spread out,
-hovered on the flanks, darted a ship here and there, fired as they
-saw opportunity, and kept their own vessels out of danger as much as
-possible. In the light and variable winds that prevailed, the great
-galleons of the Armada were almost immovable, while the English for
-the most part had smaller, lighter vessels, whose nimbleness and ready
-obedience to the helm astonished the Spanish. Standing low in the
-water, these would drive their shot right through the enemy’s hulls,
-and make off before the Spaniard could depress his guns enough to do
-any damage in return; while the army of musketeers upon whom he had
-relied so strongly had little chance to do anything at all.
-
-Thus for a week the English frigates and armed fishing-boats harassed
-the Armada on its way up the Channel, capturing and sinking many of
-the ships, while losing some of its own, of course, until at last
-the worried and baffled squadron managed to gain the roadstead of
-Calais, where the army of the Duke of Parma lay. To carry this army
-across and begin a campaign against London seemed now not only out
-of the question, but the safety of the fleet itself was a question;
-for a few days later, when a favorable wind arose, several fire-ships
-came sailing down upon them from the blockading Englishmen outside.
-These fire-ships—an important part of every fleet for two or three
-centuries—were old vessels intended to set fire to an enemy’s ships.
-Their yard-arms were set with great iron hooks, their hulls and
-riggings were saturated with oil, their decks loaded with tar-barrels,
-and their old guns overloaded, so as to spread destruction in every
-direction by bursting. Then bold crews sailed these grappling monsters
-as near the enemy as they dared,—and it must have been a service dear
-to the heart of the daring,—set fire to them, lashed their helms, and
-got away in their boats as best they could.
-
-To escape these dreadful things the Spaniards were obliged to up-anchor
-and put to sea, losing many ships and lives by fire or the wildly
-flying cannon-balls, or by going ashore in the effort; and then the
-Englishmen followed them again, like wolves after a herd of buffalo
-in winter. The Spaniards dared not go back down the Channel, and
-nothing remained to them but the hazardous voyage around the north
-of Scotland—a venture for which the towering, unwieldy galleons were
-ill-fitted. Storms overtook them in the North Sea and on the Atlantic,
-and so many were cast away on the Irish coast, where those who reached
-the shore were slain, that hardly half of the proud Armada crept back
-to Lisbon and Cadiz.
-
-[Illustration: A SEA-FIGHT OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.]
-
-This incident was one of the most notable in European history for
-two reasons: First, historically, it no doubt saved England and her
-colonies from the Inquisition, and all the other depressing and
-horrible burdens that long afterward weighted the papal countries
-of southern Europe and their American possessions; and, second, it
-reformed naval warfare not only by confirming the value of a regularly
-organized national navy, but by showing that the old-fashioned, dense
-fleet formation, carrying soldiers to fight as they would do on land,
-was wrong and ineffective.
-
-But though Spain had been humbled she was by no means crushed, and
-sea-fighting went on a long time before either she, the French, or the
-Dutch—and the last were the hardest foes—would fully admit England’s
-claim to be sovereign of all the seas around Britain, and strike their
-flags whenever they met one of her “king’s ships” in acknowledgment
-of it. England asserted that the domain of her crown covered not only
-the lands of England (and much of France), but also “the narrow seas”;
-and she defined this domain to include all the Channel waters north
-of Cape Finisterre and thence in a square area westward to the middle
-of the Atlantic. This was not an assertion: “I can beat the world in
-sea-fighting,” but was a legal claim to rule—a declaration that her
-laws extended over that much sea in the same manner that it is now
-agreed that the laws of all nations extend to a distance of three miles
-from their coasts.
-
-The whole idea of naval warfare in those days was defense of your
-own commerce and attack upon your enemy’s; and at that time any one
-you met under another flag was likely to be your “enemy” if either
-party promised spoils worth a fight. Hence not only did privateering
-flourish,—often degenerating into piracy,—not only did all merchant
-vessels go heavily armed, but the royal ships were intended principally
-for convoying or guarding merchantmen. This theory, which was only a
-part of the generally unsettled condition of that formative period,
-kept up a continual state of fighting on the sea, even between peoples
-nominally at peace, and of course led again and again to open wars.
-These were almost always popular, especially among the bold sailors
-but poor traders of England, on account of the chances for prizes and
-plunder that often more than repaid the expenses and losses of the
-conflict; thus the war with the Dutch in 1652-54, in which William Penn
-was a captain, brought in more than _£_6,000,000 worth of captures—more
-than the financial cost of the war.
-
-At this time—the first half of the sixteenth century—Holland was the
-leading commercial nation of the world. Not only had her merchants
-large interests of their own in both the East and West Indies, very
-extensive fisheries in northern waters, and trading stations in the
-African and American coasts, but a large part of the commerce of
-other nations was conducted in Dutch ships, including much of England
-itself. It was the unrighteous but determined effort to break this up
-by any and every means that brought on the second war with Holland,
-one incident of which was the capture of New Amsterdam (New York); for
-fleets no longer stayed close at home, acting mainly as defenders
-of coasts, as in the previous century, but now cruised and fought on
-the high seas, as the Spanish had learned in many a hard struggle to
-protect their trading and treasure-ships homeward bound.
-
-[Illustration: ATTACKING SPANISH GALLEONS OFF THE AZORES.]
-
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY WARREN SHEPPARD.
-
-SPANISH AND FRENCH SHIPS OF THE LINE TAKING POSITION FOR THE BATTLE OF
-TRAFALGAR.]
-
-This new practice, however, had required a change in ships and their
-equipment. The English learned this quicker than any one else. They cut
-down the lofty cabins, increased the height, while reducing the weight,
-of masts by inventing jointed topmasts, and replaced the unwieldy
-lateens by an arrangement of lofty, quickly handled square sails. By
-the middle of the seventeenth century ocean-going ships had much the
-same appearance as at present,—although far more elaborately ornamented
-and bulging aft with stern-galleries,—the massive, high-pooped Spanish
-galleon surviving longest as a relic of the old type. These changes
-allowed the armament to be taken from the front and rear of the ship,
-where it had formerly been mainly placed, there being no room in the
-waist, and allowed it to be distributed equally up and down the ship,
-which now began to deliver the “broadsides” that formed such a feature
-in sea-gunnery before the days of turreted ironclads, and this, with
-the constant improvement in the range and power of the artillery, soon
-brought about ideas of battle formation. The early plan was to provide
-a large number of ships,—eighty or one hundred on each side in a single
-action were not uncommon,—because each was weak, and also because a
-great number of fighting-men was thought necessary, and then to advance
-from the windward in a compact mass, and endeavor to close with the
-enemy and capture or destroy him by hand-to-hand promiscuous fighting.
-Our word _squadron_ means a square, and, as applied to ships, is a
-survival from those antiquated methods.
-
-But when the practice of using fire-ships became common and effective,
-and trimmer, more active ships superseded the cumbrous galleasses, it
-was seen that this close formation only exposed a fleet to destruction,
-and an open order had to be adopted, with a consequent change of
-tactics. Another lesson was, that a sea-fight was a sailor’s battle,
-where soldiers were out of place, and that to take a great number
-of weak ships into action, crowded with men, was only to risk life
-unnecessarily. Hence, larger and more heavily armed ships, but fewer of
-them, appear in later engagements; and in place of a bunch of vessels,
-“huddled together like a flock of sheep,” at which to shoot, the open
-order gave the gunners small and single targets.
-
-All these changes combined to enforce the wisdom of meeting an enemy
-in a widely spaced line, where the strongest fighting-ships were put
-forward, and smaller vessels came up in the rear. Those ahead met the
-battle-ships at the head of the enemy’s column, and the lesser ones, as
-they came up, were paired off against those of their own size, so that
-the battle became a series of equalized duels. Such was the theory of
-naval tactics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and so arose
-the term line-of-battle ship, descriptive of such national craft as are
-shown on the opposite page.
-
-These fine old line-of-battle ships were large and powerful before
-the seventeenth century ended. Thus in the British navy when 1700
-came in there were eight which had from ninety-six to one hundred and
-ten guns each—fifty-three others carrying more than seventy guns, and
-twenty-three more with more than fifty guns—all at that time regarded
-as fit for the line of battle, though a hundred years later nothing
-less than a “seventy-four” was so considered. Such were the grandly
-picturesque old vessels that won the day at Gibraltar, Copenhagen, and
-Trafalgar, and at many another spot where the whole horizon echoed to
-their thunderous broadsides; but of them all there now remain only a
-few honored hulks in harbors, or a few grand figureheads preserved in
-docks and museums.
-
-Each navy, however, had a greater number of smaller, more active
-vessels, known as frigates, corvettes, sloops-of-war, gun-brigs, etc.,
-which carried from twenty to forty-four guns, and were the “eyes of the
-fleet,” as one old strategist styled them. They answered to what we
-should now call cruisers, and often went on duty in distant parts of
-the world, or in war were scouting about and supporting the main fleet.
-This class was especially cultivated by the United States, as soon as
-it began to make a regular navy, at the close of the Revolutionary
-War, and six frigates were built at our six navy-yards during the
-last years of the last century, which were intended and proved to
-be separately “superior to any single European frigate of the usual
-dimensions” in speed, manœuvering, and fighting power, in proportion to
-their weight of ordnance. Three of them (_Constellation_, _Congress_,
-and _Chesapeake_) mounted thirty-six guns, and three (_United
-States_, _President_, and _Constitution_) forty-four guns each—mainly
-24-pounders; and all gave so good an account of themselves, as ships,
-that the high compliment was paid us of their being carefully imitated
-by foreign naval constructors.
-
-This is not a naval history, so that I am not concerned to tell of all
-the glorious or inglorious work of the navies of Europe in obtaining
-and holding, or failing to get and keep, trade routes open and
-territorial possessions intact in various parts of the world. During
-the seventeenth and eighteenth and far into the nineteenth century,
-there was no time when some nations were not fighting on the sea if not
-on land; and much of the time _all_ the maritime nations were hard at
-it, turning their guns to-day on the allies of yesterday, and fighting
-shoulder to shoulder with them the next season against some friend of
-the year before.
-
-A few of the most famous battles ought to be spoken of, however, as
-illustrating the methods and development of naval warfare, and because
-we now recognize that their consequences were far-reaching.
-
-In the wars which broke out toward the close of the eighteenth century
-due to Napoleon’s ambition to rule the world, Great Britain found
-herself engaged in a struggle not only with France, but really with
-the whole world, for the command of the seas that washed the western
-coast of Europe. The only sign of friendship to England from the Baltic
-to Gibraltar was in the doubtful neutrality of Portugal. England had
-to abandon the Mediterranean, and devote herself to facing the allied
-powers against her outside the Gates of Hercules as best she could.
-In 1797 she made a beginning by crushing a fleet of Dutch ships off
-Camperdown (Holland), and a Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent; but,
-though both were great battles, neither had any lasting effect; and
-in spite of them Napoleon planned his celebrated invasion of England
-for the following year, supposing that by his expedition to Egypt,
-threatening England’s East Indian possessions, he would draw away so
-much of the British navy that he and his allies could put an army
-across the English Channel unhindered. I need not say that his invasion
-of England never was even attempted; but for a time his fleet did hold
-command of the Mediterranean—a state of things to which an end was put
-by England’s most famous naval hero, Horatio Nelson.
-
-A long series of brilliant exploits had given Nelson fame, and the
-vigorous accounts of them he used to send home helped his great
-popularity. A large part of his service had been in American waters.
-
-In 1798 Nelson was a rear-admiral, and was sent to the Mediterranean
-after the French fleet, which, having convoyed Napoleon’s army to
-its landing at Alexandria, was ready for new operations. It is
-characteristic of the slow and almost useless methods of gaining
-intelligence in those days, that from early June to the end of July
-Nelson searched for this flotilla, and was unable to get more news of
-it than an occasional rumor that it had been at some place or other
-days or weeks before. The French knew no more as to the movements of
-their pursuers, yet the fleets were twice within a few miles of each
-other. This was Nelson’s first independent command, and his patience
-and nerves were nearly worn out by anxiety.
-
-[Illustration: WHEN DECATUR WAS A MIDSHIPMAN.]
-
-At last, on the first day of August, the English almost stumbled on the
-French at anchor in the Bay of Aboukir, among the mouths of the Nile,
-between Alexandria and Rosetta—a shallow roadstead full of shoals and
-rocks, for which Nelson had neither chart nor pilot.
-
-In the interior of this bay lay the Napoleonic squadron, under Admiral
-Brueys, in such fancied security that a large part of the crews was
-ashore, and some of the ships unprepared for a battle when the British
-appeared. It was anchored in line of battle, however, and consisted
-of thirteen ships of the line, the central one being the flagship
-_Orient_, having 120 guns, and probably the largest and most complete
-war-ship then afloat. On each side of her were the _Franklin_ and
-the _Tonnant_, of 80 guns each, and none of the others were greatly
-inferior.
-
-The British had also thirteen ships, but none was the equal of the
-best French, and one of them did not engage in the attack at all.
-Knowing nothing of the harbor, and aware that all his ships drew
-much water,—perhaps thirty feet,—Nelson had to make a long and very
-cautious detour, throwing the lead every moment and feeling his way
-in. It was then late in the afternoon, and half-past six before the
-_Goliath_, leading the column, got near enough to attract the French
-fire. Replying, but not halting, the _Goliath_, followed closely by the
-_Zealous_ and _Orion_, made for the head of the line, and then with
-a daring unrivaled, for there was barely enough water to float their
-keels, these ships slowly turned around the foremost French vessel and
-dropped their anchors in the rear of the enemy’s line. The other ships,
-as they came up, ranged alongside the front of the French, and the
-deepening twilight resounded with such a roar of broadsides as never
-will be heard again.
-
-In the darkness and smoke an English seventy-four, the _Bellerophon_,
-had engaged the monstrous _Orient_, and in a short time had been
-crushed; all her masts were swept out of her, two hundred of her people
-were killed and wounded, and she drifted out of action. But nearly the
-same fate had by that time overtaken the French _Guerrière_, for the
-_Theseus_ had coolly placed herself where she could rake the anchored
-ship and tear her to pieces. The moment the _Bellerophon_ drifted
-off, however, her place was taken by two newly arrived frigates, and
-the _Orient_ presently found herself the target of three ships which
-slowly but surely were cutting her to pieces in spite of her tremendous
-resistance. Her admiral had been killed on her deck, where half her
-officers and men lay dead or wounded, when it was suddenly seen that
-she was on fire, and the whole battle was instinctively suspended to
-watch the magnificent spectacle, save where some still poured in shot
-and shell to prevent the French crew from extinguishing the flames.
-
-Powerless either to save their ship or launch their boats, the remnant
-of the _Orient’s_ crew could only fling themselves into the water and
-trust to the mingled boats of friends and foes to pick them up. The
-ships nearest slipped their cables, and tried to edge away out of
-danger as the flames enveloped the towering masts, burning with amazing
-fierceness in the tarred rigging and lighting up the desert for miles
-inland, while the hull became a furnace. Suddenly, at a quarter before
-ten, a volcano-like explosion tore the glowing old battle-ship asunder,
-a torrent of burning fragments was hurled aloft,—with how many dead
-heroes, no one knows,—and double darkness closed over the appalling
-scene. Then the black waves were lighted anew by the flash of cannon
-and musketry, and the battle went on until daylight before the last of
-the French vessels had been conquered, while two of them had managed
-to steal away. Of the other eleven one had been burned and sunk, three
-had gone ashore, where one burned, and the remainder had been crushed
-into surrendering. The English did not lose a single vessel, for even
-the dismantled _Bellerophon_ could float, and their loss in men was far
-less than that of the French.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY WARREN SHEPPARD.
-
-THE “THESEUS” ATTACKING THE “GUERRIÈRE.”]
-
-Historians tell us that this victory was the grandest naval success
-on record. Nelson himself said that victory was too weak a term—it
-was a catastrophe. It put an end at once to Napoleon’s campaign in
-Egypt, and to all his designs against India. It gave the command of the
-Mediterranean to England, emboldened Turkey and Russia to recover the
-Ionian Islands, gave Naples a chance to assert herself, and aroused
-Austria and Russia to resist by armies Napoleon’s aggressions, so
-that from this battle dates his downfall. Its influence soon reached
-the United States, and caused it to break through its neutrality
-and begin upon the sea that naval war with France of which we hear
-very little nowadays, but which gave to our own naval record such
-glorious incidents as Truxton’s battles in the _Constellation_ with
-_L’Insurgente_ and _La Vengeance_, and Captain Little’s capture, in the
-corvette _Boston_, of the French sloop-of-war _Le Berceau_.
-
-Nelson remained in the Mediterranean for some years, by no means idle,
-and then did service of extraordinary value elsewhere, as at the battle
-of Copenhagen, which in a single remarkable conflict put an end to
-a northern conspiracy against England, and saved her a vast deal of
-trouble; but his final service was the most momentous of all, at any
-rate for the fortunes of Great Britain alone, and this was the winning
-of the battle of Trafalgar.
-
-In 1805 Napoleon had prepared for another grand invasion of England,
-and with great skill had gathered a fleet of allied French and Spanish
-vessels, which was to protect and coöperate with the strong army he
-proposed to land along the Kentish shores. This fleet was commanded by
-Admiral Villeneuve, and assembled at Cadiz, where, in October, 1805,
-it was being watched by an English fleet, commanded by Nelson and
-Collingwood, consisting of thirty-three ships of the line; twenty-seven
-of these were present when, on the morning of the 21st, the allies,
-twenty-nine battle-ships strong, came sailing out, hoping to avoid
-battle if possible. This, Nelson was resolved, should not happen; and
-dividing his forces into two columns, he made at them in such a way as
-to strike their line (then off Cape Trafalgar) in the middle of its
-crescent. The wind was very light, and an hour or more elapsed before
-even the heads of the line struck the enemy, so that there was plenty
-of time to make every preparation, and there was constant instruction
-by signaling from Nelson’s flagship _Victory_. Then at the last moment,
-when the first gun was ready to be fired, there rose upon the signal
-halyards of the _Victory_ the message that, received with ringing
-cheers, has been an inspiration to patriots the world around ever since
-since—
-
-  ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY.
-
-A few moments later Collingwood in the _Royal Sovereign_, and Nelson
-in the _Victory_, were in the thick of the foreign fleet, which
-awaited them in disorderly array, but closed about these two, bent
-upon destroying them if possible before any others could come up. The
-fury of the duels that ensued, where ships were mixed in disorder, and
-sometimes three or four against one, passes adequate description. None,
-perhaps, fared worse than the _Belle Isle_, a large English two-decker
-that was the first to reach the scene after the _Royal Sovereign_, and
-to draw off some of the fire that threatened to pulverize Collingwood’s
-ship.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  England expects every man will do his D U T Y
-
-  DRAWN FROM THE MODEL IN THE GREENWICH MUSEUM.
-
-NELSON’S SIGNAL.]
-
-The wreckage and suffering on other ships were almost as great. The
-very first broadside of the _Royal Sovereign_, taking the _Santa Ana_,
-struck down 400 out of the 1000 persons aboard; and the _Sovereign_
-herself soon lost every mast. The _Santissima Trinidada_, a Spanish
-four-decker, and the largest ship then afloat, was reduced to a wreck,
-and a dozen others lost a part or all of their masts. As for the
-_Victory_, she was always in the thick of it, receiving at one time the
-concentrated fire of seven hostile battle-ships, yet was not too much
-disabled to be manœuvered. Her captain’s aim was to engage directly
-with the French flagship _Bucentaure_, but she was closely attended
-by three other large ships, and difficult to reach. Nevertheless, the
-_Victory_ finally got across her stern, and from a few yards distance
-poured in a broadside which, sweeping the whole length of her interior,
-dismounted twenty guns, and killed and wounded 400 men. As she passed
-on, returning the fire of the other vessels near by, she was closely
-followed by the _Temeraire_, the second English ship, which had already
-become almost unmanageable; and a lifting of the smoke showed her
-smashing a little French frigate, the _Redoubtable_, which, by and by,
-was captured after almost every man had been killed, and she was in a
-sinking condition. The astonishing resistance of this little vessel,
-and the damage she did by soldiers with muskets crowded in her tops
-and firing down upon the decks of the English ships, form one of the
-most noteworthy incidents of naval history; and it is not too much to
-say that she inflicted upon Great Britain as great harm as all the
-rest of the allies put together, for it was a musket-ball from the
-mizzentop of the _Redoubtable_ that struck down, early in the action,
-the great Nelson himself. He seemed to have had a feeling, even before
-leaving England, that he would not survive this campaign, and knew his
-wound was mortal the instant it was received. He was carried below,
-and remained alive and conscious about three hours, eagerly listening
-to reports of the progress of the fight, and rejoicing at last in a
-knowledge of victory. His last words, murmured again and again, with
-his failing breath, seemed an answer to his signaled injunction, for
-they were: “_Thank God I have done my duty._”
-
-  Other men [writes Captain Mahan] have died in the hour of victory,
-  but to no other has victory so singular and so signal stamped the
-  fulfilment and completion of a great life’s work. “Finis coronat
-  opus” has of no man been more true than of Nelson. Results momentous
-  and stupendous were to flow from the annihilation of all sea power
-  except that of Great Britain, which was Nelson’s great achievement;
-  but his part was done when Trafalgar was fought, and his death in the
-  moment of completed success has obtained for that superb victory an
-  immortality of fame which even its own grandeur could scarcely have
-  insured.
-
-No such fleet actions as this ever occurred in North American waters
-in the time of the “old navy,” though there was plenty of cruising
-and fighting up and down the coast and in the West Indies. The United
-States had made its new flag respected before the end of the eighteenth
-century, but it was done mainly in European waters, where that
-marvelous captain, Paul Jones, had been defying enemies to the point of
-rashness.
-
-Paul Jones was the first man to hoist our national ensign (the
-rattlesnake flag) on an American ship, and again the first to hoist
-the stars and stripes, and was the ranking officer of the continental
-navy. He records that “in the Revolution he had twenty-three battles
-and solemn rencounters by sea; made seven descents in Britain and her
-colonies; took of her navy two ships of equal and two of far superior
-force,” and so on. It is true that he alone of his day steadfastly
-refused to acknowledge England’s supremacy of the seas; that the flag
-of the United States alone was never struck to Great Britain except
-under force of honorable combat; and that on the ships commanded by
-Paul Jones it was never struck at all!
-
-Every Yankee school-boy knows of the terrible fight of the crazy old
-sloop-of-war _Bon Homme Richard_ against the _Serapis_, a new English
-50-gun frigate in the North Sea, in which a sinking and burning and
-shot-riddled vessel, able after the first broadside to bring only
-three or four small guns into practice, conquered and captured her
-twice-greater antagonist. It is not a story one can tell in a few
-words, but it was a deed that is regarded in naval annals as among the
-most extraordinary in the history of the world, and it won for the new
-republic a credit in Europe that was of vast benefit to it and all its
-wandering citizens.
-
-Great Britain, though humiliated, had not been seriously hurt by the
-loss of two or three ships out of her six hundred, and she still tried
-to enforce against the rising naval power on the west side of the
-Atlantic the subservience which she received along its eastern shores.
-It took the form of asserting her right to stop and board any American
-vessel, governmental or private, and seize and impress into her own
-service any British subject found serving in the crew. This always met
-with protest and resistance, and at last became so galling that in 1812
-the United States declared war against Great Britain’s might rather
-than continue to submit to it.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  _Drawn from Life by S. DeKoster Decʳ.8 1800, Engraved by Jd. Stow._
-
-BARON NELSON OF THE NILE.]
-
-This might gradually overcame us, and British fleets sailed up and down
-our coasts unhindered, but not until the enemy had been surprised by
-many harder knocks than they anticipated, and had learned one thing for
-certain,—that while man for man the Yankees were equally good seamen
-and fighters, they were better ship-builders, and could teach lessons
-in that art which their enemies were not above learning: and finally we
-won by sheer force of victories at sea.
-
-I have already spoken of the six frigates which were used in that war,
-as admittedly the best of their kind in the world. Except the unlucky
-_Chesapeake_, which was rashly carried unprepared into the fatal action
-against the _Shannon_, where Lawrence lost his life, but won undying
-fame in the memory of his countrymen by his “Don’t give up the ship,”
-all did glorious work. Thus, the _United States_ under Decatur reduced
-to a wreck off Madeira, and brought as a prize to New York, the British
-44-gun frigate _Macedonian_ in October, 1812, itself remaining almost
-uninjured,—a victory due to superior seamanship and gunnery.
-
-The same skill, using a ship of superior sailing power, accounted
-largely for the splendid victory of the United States sloop-of-war
-_Wasp_ (18 guns), a week earlier, near Bermuda, in an encounter with
-the British sloop _Frolic_ (19 guns), where in three quarters of an
-hour the _Frolic_ was totally dismasted and reduced to a rolling
-wreck, with ninety killed or wounded out of a crew of one hundred and
-ten, while the _Wasp’s_ loss was only ten. A British seventy-four
-then came up and captured both the victor and her prize; but eighteen
-months later a second _Wasp_, by reason of her better gunnery, cut to
-pieces at different times two other ships with comparatively small
-injury to herself. Nor could the _President_ have given so good an
-account of herself in her unfortunate encounter with the _Belvidera_,
-and again when chased and finally captured by the squadron led by the
-_Endymion_, had not her sailing qualities and gunnery been of so high
-an order—qualities which also distinguished the American fleets on Lake
-Erie and Lake Champlain.
-
-[Illustration: THE “FROLIC” REDUCED TO A WRECK BY THE FIRST “WASP”
-(1812).]
-
-But the honors of that brilliant naval war belonged chiefly, after all,
-to the _Constitution_—“Old Ironsides,” as the people loved to call
-her,—which is enshrined in the history and hearts of the United States
-as Nelson’s _Victory_ is in those of Great Britain.
-
-The _Constitution_ was the finest, perhaps, of the United States
-frigates, and a favorite ship with commanders, yet her fame began with
-her success in running away, Broke’s British squadron chasing her three
-nights and two days, only to lose her after all. The winds were so
-light that she sent out her boats to help the sails urge her forward.
-It was only a few days after that (August 19, 1812) that Commodore
-Isaac Hull, cruising in search of the British vessel _Guerrière_ (the
-same that had been captured from the French in the battle of the Nile,
-and again dismasted at Trafalgar), overhauled her off the coast of
-Newfoundland. The London newspapers had not only been sneering at the
-_Constitution_ as “a bundle of pine boards sailing under a bit of
-striped bunting,” but Captain Dacres had sent a boastful challenge
-to Hull to meet him and see what would happen. The vessels, though
-nominally of different rate, were actually in close equality, and
-both crews were eager for a fair fight. It was already well along in
-the afternoon, and the sea was rough, but Hull would not reply to the
-enemy’s fire until he was within pistol-shot, then his broadside opened.
-
-  “Fifteen minutes after the contest began,” to quote Lossing’s lively
-  account, “the mizzenmast of the _Guerrière_ was shot away, her
-  mainyard was in slings, and her hull, spars, sails, and rigging were
-  torn to pieces. By a skilful movement, the _Constitution_ now fell
-  foul of her foe, her bowsprit running into the larboard quarter of
-  her antagonist. The cabin of the _Constitution_ was set on fire by
-  the explosion of the forward guns of the _Guerrière_, but the flames
-  were soon extinguished. Both parties attempted to board, while the
-  roar of the great guns was terrific. The sea was rolling heavily,
-  and would not permit a safe passage from one vessel to the other.
-  At length the _Constitution_ became disentangled, and shot ahead of
-  the _Guerrière_, when the mainmast of the latter, shattered into
-  weakness, fell into the sea. The _Guerrière_, shivered and shorn,
-  rolled like a log in the trough of the billows. Hull sent his
-  compliments to Captain Dacres, and inquired whether he had struck
-  his flag. Dacres, who was a ‘jolly tar,’ looking up and down at the
-  stumps of his masts, coolly and dryly replied: ‘Well, I don’t know.
-  Our mizzenmast is gone, our mainmast is gone,—upon the whole you may
-  say we _have_ struck our flag.’”
-
-Too completely wrecked to be of any further use, the historic old ship
-was set on fire and blown up, and so ended her pride and her story.
-Hull lost only fourteen men killed and wounded, while the British lost
-seventy, dead, and all the survivors prisoners. This calamity, on the
-heels of similar successes elsewhere for the “bit of striped bunting,”
-spread consternation throughout Great Britain not only, but in the
-other European monarchies, for it presaged the rise of a new power to
-be reckoned with, where novel and superior instruments and methods of
-warfare opposed uncalculated forces to the old régime.
-
-This conviction was enforced upon Europe anew only four months later
-by the _Constitution_ overtaking and crushing in West Indian waters
-the 38-gun frigate _Java_, which also was burned to the water’s edge,
-because the wreck was not worth saving; and again the British loss was
-many times greater than the American. Captain William Bainbridge, who
-had distinguished himself in the Mediterranean, was her commander.
-
-[Illustration: THE “CONSTITUTION” CHASED BY CAPTAIN BROKE’S SQUADRON
-
-The ports on the upper deck aft were roughly cut to meet the emergency.
-The sailors in the rigging threw water from buckets upon the sails to
-make them hold better the faint breeze, and below hose pipe was used to
-the same purpose. During the three days’ chase boats were sent out to
-tow, and kedge-anchors were used to warp the ship forward.]
-
-Various successes marked her career for the next two years, until,
-under the command of Captain Charles Stewart, she had her memorable
-adventure off Madeira, in which she engaged with the two British ships
-_Cyane_, thirty-six guns, and _Levant_, eighteen guns, and captured
-both, with a loss of only three men killed and twelve wounded.
-Stewart set sail with his prizes and prisoners for Porto Praya,
-whence he purposed sending his prisoners to New York in a captured
-merchantman. Reaching there on March 10th, he was next day busy at
-these arrangements, when the topsails of several men-of-war were seen
-entering the harbor through the prevailing fog. Having no trust that,
-if these were British, their commanders would respect the courtesies
-of a weak neutral port, Stewart felt that his only chance was to try to
-run away in the fog, and made immediate preparations to do so, sending
-word to the _Levant_ and _Cyane_ to follow. Being discovered by the
-strangers—three large British frigates—at the outlet of the harbor,
-their escape immediately became a question of seamanship and sailing.
-Here the Americans showed their superiority, and effectually dodging
-both the ships and the cannon-balls of the pursuers, the _Levant_ got
-back under the protection of the guns of the fort at Porto Praya, while
-the _Constitution_ and _Levant_ fairly outsailed the frigates and
-escaped.
-
-In 1830 brave Old Ironsides was condemned as worn out, and ordered
-to be sold. But, as a similar sad fate overtaking the “Fighting
-_Temeraire_” had been made the occasion of an immortal painting
-by Turner, and so, perhaps, had caused Nelson’s still more famous
-battle-ship _Victory_ to be preserved in the harbor of Portsmouth
-as a shrine of naval inspiration, so the obloquy that menaced the
-_Constitution_ now fired the heart of a young poet to write a
-passionate appeal to patriotism. Who does not know Dr. Holmes’s ringing
-stanzas?—
-
-  Oh, better that her shattered hulk
-    Should sink beneath the wave;
-  Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
-    And there should be her grave.
-  Nail to the mast her holy flag,
-    Set every threadbare sail,
-  And give her to the God of Storms,
-    The lightning and the gale!
-
-[Illustration: HOMEWARD BOUND.]
-
-The country caught the spirit, and such a cry of protest went up that
-the vandalism was stayed, and Old Ironsides was again repaired—hardly
-anything but her ornaments was now left of the original structure—and
-took several cruises, one of which was in carrying wheat to
-famine-stricken Ireland. Later she was used as a school-ship, but
-finally became worthless even for that, and in 1895 the question
-arose whether she should be broken up at the Brooklyn navy-yard or
-towed around to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and there laid up in a
-line with the _Macedonian_ and a few other ancient hulks that were
-rotting quietly away in honorable age, and have now wholly disappeared.
-Sentiment dictated the latter course, and, with a crew aboard, prepared
-to take to their boats at a moment’s notice, the leaking and crazy old
-warrior, stately even yet, and sadly saluted by every fort and vessel
-she passed, crept around to her last berth at Kittery Point. She is the
-last and the most glorious representative of the “old navy.”
-
-[Illustration: TYPES OF BATTLE-SHIPS—1890 AND 1800.]
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[4] An example of the so-called forty-bank galley is illustrated, so
-far as its forward end will show it, in the picture of the ship of
-Ptolemy Philopator, on page 43. The forty “banks” appear to be groups
-of oars in a few tiers.
-
-[5] Three other terms of similar sound need explanation. The _galiot_
-was a small, fast galley of the Levant. The _gallivat_ was a large,
-swift, two-masted, armed sail-boat used by Malay pirates. The _galleon_
-was any Spanish ship sailing to and from the Spanish main; hence,
-especially a treasure-ship.
-
-[6] It was known later as the Invincible Armada.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI
-
-(_Continued_)
-
-WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES
-
-PART II—THE PRESENT ERA OF STEAM AND STEEL
-
-
-The introduction of steam made little difference in naval affairs at
-first, so far as either strategy or tactics are concerned, although it
-changed the conditions of naval action in two principal ways and in
-many minor ones. Ships could now, like the early galleys, be placed
-in any position the commander pleased, and, unlike galleys, this
-effort could be sustained a long time, for engines do not tire out
-like human arms. On the other hand, ships propelled by steam needed to
-return to port at frequent intervals to obtain coal, and naval powers
-found it necessary to provide, either by possession or treaty, safe
-coaling-stations in various parts of the world for the use of their
-cruising fleets.
-
-The first steam war-ships were naturally fitted with side
-paddle-wheels; but as soon as the screw-propeller came into use the
-navy was quick to adopt it. “By its use the whole motive power could
-be protected by being placed below the water-line. It interfered much
-less than the paddle with the efficiency and handiness of the vessel
-under sail alone, and it enabled ships to be kept generally under
-sail. Great importance was attached to this, as the handling of a ship
-under sail was justly thought an invaluable means of training both
-officers and men in ready resource, prompt action, and self-reliance.”
-For this reason masts and sails were retained long after they were
-admitted to be detrimental to the fighting qualities of battle-ships.
-Naval reformers had to wait until the last generation of “old salts,”
-trained on “blue water,” had died off, and their scornful sneers at
-“tea-kettle” seamanship had been silenced in the only way possible,
-before they could persuade governments to build or men to serve in
-the new style of vessels. In truth, the transition from the fighting
-machinery and methods that prevailed until, say, the bombardment of
-Acre, in 1840, to those that decided the inferiority of China in her
-struggles with Japan at the Yalu and elsewhere, was rapid enough to
-make even a sea-dog dizzy.
-
-[Illustration: THE “KEARSARGE” GETTING INTO POSITION TO RAKE THE
-“ALABAMA” AT THE CLOSE OF THE COMBAT.]
-
-Excellent types of the war-steamers, intermediate between the old two-
-and three-deckers and the sailless “ironclads” that followed, were
-those two actors in that most glorious sea-fight of the American Civil
-War—the _Kearsarge_ and _Alabama_.
-
-In this great fight, which took place a few miles off the harbor of
-Cherbourg, France, one beautiful summer Sunday (June 19th) in 1864,
-much the same tactics prevailed as in any one of the earlier ocean
-duels. As the _Alabama_ came on she began firing the two-hundred-pound
-pivot-rifle forward, which was her main gun, while the _Kearsarge_ was
-yet a mile away. The latter waited a little before replying, but only a
-few moments elapsed before both were near enough and hard at it, each
-doing its best to get a position ahead of its antagonist for raking,—a
-disadvantage which the other steadily avoided; and this caused them
-to follow one another about in advancing circles, of which seven were
-described before the end came.
-
-We have a story of the battle as seen from the deck of the _Kearsarge_,
-written by her surgeon, who had little to do except observe the
-conflict.
-
-  The _Kearsarge_ gunners [he tells us] had been cautioned against
-  firing without direct aim, and had been advised to point the heavy
-  guns below rather than above the water-line, and to clear the deck
-  of the enemy with the lighter ones. Though subjected to an incessant
-  storm of shot and shell, they kept their stations and obeyed
-  instructions.
-
-  The effect upon the enemy was readily perceived, and nothing could
-  restrain the enthusiasm of our men. Cheer succeeded cheer; caps were
-  thrown in the air or overboard; jackets were discarded; sanguine of
-  victory, the men were shouting as each projectile took effect: “That
-  is a good one!” “Down, boys!” “Give her another like the last!” “Now
-  we have her!” and so on, cheering and shouting to the end.
-
-  After exposure to an uninterrupted cannonade for eighteen minutes
-  without casualties, a sixty-eight-pounder Blakely shell passed
-  through the starboard bulwarks below the main rigging, exploded
-  upon the quarterdeck, and wounded three of the crew of the after
-  pivot-gun. With these exceptions, not an officer or man received
-  serious injury. The three unfortunates were speedily taken below,
-  and so quietly was the act done, that at the termination of the
-  fight a large number of the men were unaware that any of their
-  comrades were wounded. Two shots entered the ports occupied by the
-  thirty-twos, where several men were stationed, one taking effect in
-  the hammock-netting, the other going through the opposite port, yet
-  none were hit. A shell exploded in the hammock-netting and set the
-  ship on fire; the alarm calling for fire-quarters was sounded, and
-  men detailed for such an emergency put out the fire, while the rest
-  stayed at the guns.
-
-  The _Kearsarge_ concentrated her fire and poured in the eleven-inch
-  shells with deadly effect. One penetrated the coal-bunker of the
-  _Alabama_, and a dense cloud of coal-dust arose. Others struck near
-  the water-line between the main and mizzen masts, exploded within
-  board, or passing through burst beyond. Crippled and torn, the
-  _Alabama_ moved less quickly and began to settle by the stern, yet
-  did not slacken her fire, but returned successive broadsides without
-  disastrous result to us.
-
-  Captain Semmes witnessed the havoc made by the shells, especially by
-  those of our after pivot-gun, and offered a reward for its silence.
-  Soon his battery was turned upon this particular offending gun
-  for the purpose of silencing it. It was in vain, for the work of
-  destruction went on. We had completed the seventh rotation on the
-  circular track and begun the eighth; the _Alabama_, now settling,
-  sought to escape by setting all available sail (fore-trysail and two
-  jibs), left the circle, amid a shower of shot and shell, and headed
-  for the French waters; but to no purpose. In winding the _Alabama_
-  presented the port battery with only two guns bearing, and showed
-  gaping sides through which the water washed. The _Kearsarge_ pursued,
-  keeping on a line nearer the shore, and with a few well-directed
-  shots hastened the sinking condition. Then the _Alabama_ was at our
-  mercy. Thus ended the fight after one hour and two minutes.
-
-One incident of this battle much talked of at the time, and given as
-an excuse for their defeat by the Confederates (though without good
-reason), was the fact that the waist of the _Kearsarge_, opposite the
-engines, was protected by anchor-chains, hung in close festoons on the
-outside of the ship, and kept in place and concealed by a boxing of
-thin boards. This, however, was not the first attempt at protecting
-ships by armor, which had now become necessary to meet successfully
-the better guns and projectiles that year by year were increased in
-penetrative power. New powders and explosives were constantly being
-invented also, each more effective than the preceding; and as these
-were not only used in guns but applied to the filling of shells, these
-bursting missiles for a time almost displaced solid shot.
-
-Along with this the discovery and perfection of the Bessemer and
-other processes of making steel, and methods of adapting rifling to
-great cannon, produced a rapid and varied increase in size and an
-improvement in quality in the guns supplied to ships as well as in
-those used upon shore.
-
-Against these new weapons the old “wooden walls” were of no avail. Oak
-and teak, however sound and thick, failed to turn aside the conical
-projectiles as they had the old round shot and shell. The ponderous
-missiles would crash clear through, smashing everything in their path,
-and sending showers of death-dealing splinters right and left. The navy
-had to protect itself by a revival of the armor with which knights of
-the middle ages guarded against arrows and javelins and sword-points.
-By and by, when guns and bullets came, the knights thickened their
-armor in an attempt to resist these new missiles, until at last it
-reached a weight too great to be carried, and the whole cumbrous
-panoply had to be laid aside, and knightly tactics altogether changed.
-Many persons believe that this history will be repeated in the case
-of the sea-warriors of the world, which, within the memory of many a
-grizzled admiral, have changed from buoyant and beautiful ships to grim
-and shapeless fortresses afloat.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE “MERRIMAC” BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION INTO
-  AN IRONCLAD.
-
-Compare with illustration on page 139.]
-
-The Americans, fearless of sea-traditions, were the first to propose
-armor for ships, but the French first practically applied it, building
-several “floating batteries,” covered with iron 4¾ inches thick, in
-1855. The English copied them, in somewhat more ship-shape form; and
-then the French began boldly to sheathe some of their frigates with
-iron plates and call them “ironclads.” By this time iron hulls had
-begun to be used commonly in the British merchant service, but of
-course the men-of-war’s men, the slowest class of persons on earth
-to accept any change, insisted that iron would by no means do for
-war-ships. Nevertheless a few progressive spirits persuaded their
-high-mightinesses, the Lords of the Admiralty, to try an experiment
-in building one, and, in 1860, the first iron war-ship was launched
-and named _Warrior_, while all the old salts wagged their heads and
-predicted the end of “Britannia rules the waves,” until there wasn’t a
-really _jolly_ tar to be found from Penolar Point to Pentland Firth.
-To a certain extent these hardy old growlers were right, though their
-idea of a remedy was wrong. It proved a failure to build old-style
-battle-ships of iron or even of steel, or to coat them all over with
-armor, even when greatly thickened. Not only were they slow and
-somewhat unmanageable, but by the time one of them had been built with
-thicker walls than its latest rival, somebody had invented artillery
-whose projectiles would penetrate it. Ships that are “ship-shape,”
-that is, possess masts and sails, but are constructed wholly of iron
-or steel, and more or less heavily armored, have survived, and will
-always be a part of the world’s navies, no doubt, but their uses will
-be subsidiary to heavy fighting; and with the disappearance of the
-wooden sailing line-of-battle ship in the Crimean war and of the iron
-war-steamer a quarter of a century later, all traditions of the “old
-navy” were ended—traditions that went back to the days of Drake.
-
-But who could have foreseen that this swift and momentous upsetting
-should come about, not through the efforts of the great sea powers of
-Europe,—the giants who had been struggling for the control of the ocean
-for three hundred years,—but from the brain and purse of landsmen in a
-country of the New World not taken into account as a naval power at all.
-
-You need not be told that it was Ericsson’s invention and Henry
-Grinnell’s building and Lieutenant Worden’s courageous fighting of the
-little _Monitor_ in Hampton Roads, on that fair March Sunday in 1862,
-that brought about this change. When her turret—the “cheese-box on a
-raft”—successfully withstood the assault of that heavily armed floating
-battery, the _Merrimac_ (or _Virginia_), all the war-ships of the world
-felt themselves beaten, too, and wise seamen saw that they must prepare
-to face a new foe.
-
-[Illustration: SIDE ELEVATION AND DECK-PLAN OF THE “MONITOR.”]
-
-At once all maritime governments began to build fighting-vessels which
-were castles of steel afloat, and smaller ships for various services
-that more resembled a Nootka war-canoe in outline than one of the
-frigates that used to do their work. So shapeless were they that a
-new term had to be used, and we began to call them _cruisers_. All
-war-ships, in fact, are now classified by their work, not by their
-shape or size or rig.
-
-First, fewest, and heaviest are the harbor-defense vessels—monitors and
-massively walled floating batteries, intended to remain in harbors, or
-close to the coast, as movable forts.
-
-Second, battle-ships—the strongest, most thickly armored, heavily armed
-style of ships that can be made, and still be able to go to sea; but
-these are not expected to leave their home ports for a long time, nor
-to go to any great distance unless compelled to do so in actual war.
-
-Third, cruisers. These take the place of the old-fashioned lesser
-fighting-ships, the seventy-fours, frigates, corvettes, and sloops, and
-vary greatly in size, model, speed, and power of armament.
-
-Fourth, small, swift, strongly armed but lightly armored, torpedo-boat
-chasers, small gunboats for use in rivers and shallow coastal waters,
-despatch-boats, dynamite-cruisers, such as our American _Vesuvius_,
-tow-boats, and similar minor craft—the run-abouts of the naval service.
-
-Fifth, torpedo-boats.
-
-The material of all these is steel. Wood is no longer permitted even in
-the fittings of their cabins, because wood will splinter and burn.
-
-The great hull of a modern battle-ship, as described by Lieutenant S.
-A. Staunton, U. S. N., which supports and carries the vast weights of
-machinery, guns, and armor, aggregating perhaps more than ten thousand
-tons, is built of plates of rolled steel, varying from 1⅜ inches thick
-at the keel to ¾ inch at the water-line. These are closely jointed and
-fitted, and bound together with straps, angle-irons, and brackets, so
-as to make a strong unyielding structure braced in all directions.
-Then, through the central part of the ship, at least, vertical plates
-are erected upon the frame and outside plating, which bear a second
-or inner bottom, thus forming the “double bottom” as high as the
-water-line, having the space between the inner and outer sheathing
-separated into a multitude of small water-tight cells, so that an
-injury to the outside hull would not cause the vessel to leak unless
-the inner bottom were also punctured.
-
-Throughout the whole length of the vessel, reaching from side to
-side and from the keel to the main deck, are many steel bulkheads,
-sufficiently strong to resist the pressure of the water, and
-communicating only by water-tight doors, so that even were an accident,
-such as a collision or running upon a rock, or an enemy’s shell, to
-open a hole through both bottoms, the ship would still float, because
-the inflowing water would be confined to a single compartment, leaving
-the rest of the ship dry and buoyant. Nothing less than the blow of a
-ram, smashing through everything and throwing several compartments
-into one, would be likely to sink such a ship, and this is one reason
-why ramming has again become prominent in naval tactics.
-
-[Illustration: THE FIRST SEA-FIGHT OF MODERN WAR-SHIPS.
-
-The Peruvian turret-ship “Huascar” between the fire of the Chilean
-ironclads “Almirante Cochrane” and “Blanco Encalada,” October 8, 1879.]
-
-But while safety from sinking is thus reasonably assured, this is more
-a precaution of seaworthiness against the accidents of storms than
-toward injuries receivable in battle. Passenger and freight steamers
-now have the double bottoms and water-tight compartments, and the best
-of these have arrangements for mounting light but powerful guns upon
-their decks, so that they may be utilized by the government in a war
-emergency as light cruisers, as armed transports, as swift scouts, or
-in other highly important ways; they will then be coated with a light
-protective armor, but will not be expected to engage in a contest with
-a real fighting-vessel.
-
-The idea of armor-plate is, as has been said, scarcely half a
-century old, and the moment it was put on (amid the jeers of the old
-line-of-battle tars, who thought they had done all that the dignity
-of the profession permitted when they arranged their rolled-up
-hammocks along the bulwarks to catch musket-balls, and spread nettings
-to prevent somewhat the flight of splinters) ingenious men began to
-improve their powder and strengthen their guns to overcome the new
-defenses. To meet these improvements armor has been increased and
-perfected, until now war-vessels are no longer “ships” in any proper
-sense of the word, but floating fortresses of steel, the names of whose
-defensive parts, even, have been borrowed from land fortifications,
-such as _turret_ and _barbette_.
-
-[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “MASSACHUSETTS.”]
-
-A limit to this defensive strength is marked in two directions.
-First, by the size it is possible to make a vessel, and still keep
-her seaworthy and manageable; and, second, by the weight of armor
-such a vessel can carry, in addition to the weight of the framework,
-machinery, guns, and other things necessary. These limits seemed to be
-reached some time ago in some of the monstrous battle-ships built in
-Europe, and when it was found that even while they were in construction
-rifled guns had been invented that would drive their projectiles
-through the thickest wall of wrought-iron or steel that these or any
-other vessels could carry, naval constructors began to despair of
-keeping ahead of the gun-makers, and there was even talk of abandoning
-armor altogether, and fighting battles out with bared breasts as we
-used to do.
-
-  The percentage of weight which may be allotted to armor in the design
-  of a ship limits the area which can be wholly protected, but often
-  permits the partial protection of other areas of less importance to
-  her vitality and destructive force. Motive power, steering-gear,
-  and magazines stand first upon the list of those features demanding
-  complete protection.... The heavy shells from an enemy’s guns may do
-  many other forms of injury besides sinking a vessel and disabling her
-  crew. They may strike and disable her engines, or pierce her boilers,
-  causing disastrous explosions. They may injure her steering-gear,
-  destroy the mechanism which controls her turrets and guns, or injure
-  the guns themselves and their carriages. In every feature of offense
-  which renders her a formidable and dangerous foe—her speed, her
-  mobility, the fire of her guns—a man-of-war is dangerously vulnerable
-  unless she be protected by armor, unless the enemy’s shot be rejected
-  by plates which it cannot penetrate.
-
-Then came an invention that put a new face upon the matter,—the
-surface-hardening of plates, composed of a mixture of nickel with
-steel,—which, from one of its perfectors, is known as “Harveyizing” it.
-Other processes also are known. This gave to the surface of the metal
-such a flinty hardness that the heaviest and most highly tempered steel
-projectiles would almost invariably break to pieces when they struck
-it—the same projectiles that were able to punch a hole clear through a
-target-plate of ordinary wrought-steel twenty-two inches thick!
-
-Plates thus surface-hardened are now made in Europe, and as well, if
-not better, in the United States, where we have learned and taught the
-rest of the world how to make them by rolling—a much better, as well as
-cheaper, process than the former method of hammering them into shape.
-
-It was found that with these hard-surfaced plates much less thickness
-was required to contend successfully with the great guns opposed to
-them than had been the case before; and the great saving of weight
-enabled a much larger extent of armor to be borne upon a ship than was
-formerly possible, so arranged as to protect all her hull and vital
-parts.
-
-Thus, in a typical modern battle-ship, say 360 feet long, 72
-feet broad, and drawing 24 feet of water, having an armor of
-surface-hardened nickel-steel, this armor is thus disposed: amidships,
-and a quarter of her length behind the point of the prow, is built up a
-semicircular “barbette,” or wall, of the thickest armor, behind which
-is a “turret,” moving to the right or left through an arc equal to half
-the horizon, no higher than necessary to cover and work the guns, and
-having its motor mechanism fully protected by the barbette. This is the
-forward turret—a swinging fort, carrying with it, as it turns, two of
-the heaviest guns in the ship.
-
-
-[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “INDIANA.”]
-
-Half-way from the center to the stern stands the after turret and its
-barbette, similarly built of the strongest armor,—ten to twelve inches
-thick,—and sweeping with its guns half the horizon.
-
-From a point just in front of the forward barbette two walls of the
-heaviest possible armor, reaching vertically from four and a half feet
-below the water-line (loaded) to three feet above it, extend diagonally
-backward to the sides of the ship, then continue along its side in a
-“belt” to points opposite the after barbette, where they bend inward
-as before and meet just aft of the after barbette; but hereafter the
-increased efficiency of armor, by further reducing its weight, will
-probably enable the armor-belts to be carried to the extreme ends of
-the ship, which otherwise can be so seriously damaged by an enemy as to
-interfere with the speed and control of a ship in action, even if it
-does not disable her.
-
-But while these upright walls will resist a direct shot, it is equally
-necessary to guard against a plunging fire, and therefore the space
-between the turrets, at least, must be roofed over with a steel deck,
-two or three inches thick, to deflect shot that come just over the top
-of the armor-belt.
-
-In addition to this, on each side of the vessel are erected one or
-two smaller turrets, carrying somewhat smaller guns than those of
-the forward and after turrets, and also protected by heavy barbettes
-which reach down to the armor-belt and thoroughly protect the turning
-mechanism, passage of ammunition, etc. These various upper parts are
-connected by defenses which may not resist the largest shells, but are
-safe against smaller shot.
-
-Now, what is the armament of this fortress which thus protects all the
-motive power and interior machinery of the ship, by which she can be
-made so terrible an engine of combative force? Well, it is as different
-from the bronze “long-toms” and carronades of the old three-deckers,
-or even from ten-inch smooth-bore “Dahlgrens” of the days of our Civil
-War, as is the ship itself from old-time models. In place of broadside
-batteries of forty or fifty cannon hidden in clouds of smoke, there are
-now six or eight big rifles, from whose muzzles wreaths of thin gas
-only drift to leeward; and, more striking still, in contrast, a ship
-is no longer comparatively helpless when headed or turned sternward
-to an enemy,—when the “raking,” formerly so justly dreaded, would be
-received,—but is rather more able to do damage in that position than by
-a “broadside.”
-
-The guns themselves are marvels of structure and power. All of those
-used in the United States navy are made by the government in the
-gun-shops at the Washington navy-yard, and are “built up.” The methods
-and tools required for this are the invention of Americans, as well as
-the complicated arrangements for closing the breech, and the carriages
-and mechanism for overcoming the tremendous recoil and handling the
-ponderous ammunition; the latter, often weighing hundreds of pounds,
-is handed up to the gunners from the magazines below by hoists worked
-by electricity.
-
-The history of the development of heavy ordnance, especially that
-applied to naval uses, is one of the most interesting chapters in
-mechanics; and a surprising number of ways of making a ship’s cannon
-have been tried and rejected. Out of this two things seem now to be
-settled: namely, that a gun composed of steel in separate parts welded
-together is best, and that the best missile to shoot from it is a
-conical shell, very hard and heavy, yet containing an explosive small
-in quantity but exceedingly powerful.
-
-Such guns are built up of a tube or “core” of steel of the required
-size, upon which is shrunk a jacket, covering the rear, or breech half
-of the core, outside of which are shrunk on several broad hoops. The
-cutting out of the bore to exactly the proper caliber and the plowing
-of the spiral riflings put the gun in readiness for its breech-closing
-and other attachments. This process requires several months, involves
-large capital and powerful machinery, and good results imply the very
-highest workmanship.
-
-[Illustration: THE UNITED STATES CRUISER “BROOKLYN” (STERN VIEW).]
-
-Such are the guns of modern men-of-war; and a first-class battle-ship
-carries four twelve- or thirteen-inch rifles (that is, having a bore
-twelve or thirteen inches in diameter), several eight- or ten-inch
-rifles, and many smaller guns arranged to be fired with extraordinary
-speed, and hence called “rapid-fire” guns; while her upper works
-and “military tops” fairly bristle with fierce little six-, four-,
-and one-pounders,—revolving magazine rifles, capable of discharging
-rifle-balls as fast as a man can turn the crank.
-
-[Illustration: ON BOARD A BATTLE-SHIP GOING INTO ACTION. WORKING THE
-RAPID-FIRE GUNS.]
-
-To give some idea of the size and power of one of the 13-inch guns,
-whose long muzzles, in pairs, project so far out of the turrets that
-hide their mountings and firing-crew, let me tell you that it is 40
-feet long, more than 4 feet in diameter, and weighs 60½ tons. “It
-requires 550 pounds of powder to load it, and the projectile weighs
-half a ton. The muzzle-velocity of the projectile is 2100 feet per
-second, with the stated charge, and its energy is sufficient to send it
-through 26 inches of steel at a distance of 600 yards. At an elevation
-of 40 degrees the range of the gun will be not far from 15 miles.”
-
-In such a ship, deep down within the fortress is the massive and
-complicated machinery, steam and electric, upon which the life and
-activity of the whole structure depend. The power is generated in four
-enormous boilers, seventeen feet in diameter and twenty in length,
-their steel shells one and a half inches thick, built to carry a
-working-pressure of 160 pounds to the square inch. Each pair of these
-boilers, placed fore and aft and side by side, is installed in a
-separate compartment, with fire-rooms at the ends. Every boiler has
-four furnaces in each end, which give eight to each fire-room, or a
-total of thirty-two. The two boiler compartments are separated by a
-water-tight bulkhead, and by a deep, broad coal-bunker. At the sides of
-the ship are also coal-bunkers, which supplement the heavy armor-belt
-by the protection of a mass of coal twelve feet in thickness—in itself
-a not inconsiderable earthwork, which might arrest the fragments of a
-bursting shell that had succeeded in piercing the armor. No casualty of
-naval combat can be worse than the penetration of high-pressure boilers
-by heavy shells. Their complete protection is an imperative condition,
-quite as important as the protection of the magazines.
-
-Such is a modern battle-ship—a “wonderful and complex instrument of
-warfare,” as Lieutenant Staunton has expressed it.
-
-  She is filled [he tells us] with powerful agencies, all obedient to
-  the control of man—the creatures of his brain and the servants of his
-  will. Steam in its simple application drives her main engines and
-  many auxiliaries. Steam transformed into hydraulic power moves her
-  steering-gear and turns her turrets. Steam converted into electrical
-  energy produces her incandescent and search-lights, works small
-  motors in remote places, and fires her guns when desired. Every
-  application of energy, every device of mechanism, finds its office
-  somewhere in that vast hull, and the source of all the varied forms
-  of power lies in the great boilers, far down below danger of shot
-  and shell, under which grimy stokers are always shoveling coal.
-  Decades of thought and study, experiment and failure, trial again
-  with partial success, and repeated trials with complete success, have
-  assigned to each agency its appropriate function, and perfected the
-  mechanism through which its work is performed.
-
-These modern developments have added one entirely novel and tremendous
-adjunct to the fleet, in the torpedo-boat and its terrible weapon.
-These take the place to some extent of the fire-ship of a century ago,
-which was designed to injure the enemy not by silencing his guns or
-overcoming his gunners, but by insidiously destroying his ship itself.
-
-The torpedo is, in its simplest form, simply some arrangement of a
-powerful explosive to be set off beneath or against the bottom of a
-ship, and shatter or sink it. The idea is as old as gunpowder, but it
-is only in recent times that it has been made effective,—how effective
-we do not yet know.
-
-Torpedoes are used in two ways: one is by fixing the torpedo beneath
-the water, either to be exploded by means of a percussion-cap when the
-ship runs against it, or from the shore by means of electricity. Such
-arrangements as this, called submarine mines, are regarded as a most
-important means of defending harbors against hostile attack. During
-our Civil War they were extensively used by the Confederates, and were
-sometimes successful, as when one destroyed the monitor _Tecumseh_ in
-Mobile harbor, during Farragut’s famous attack there in 1864.
-
-[Illustration: THE MONITOR “TECUMSEH” SUNK BY A TORPEDO AT MOBILE,
-1864.]
-
-The former class, for which the word _torpedoes_ is now reserved,
-includes explosive agents which are to be placed or sent against a
-ship’s bottom at sea and exploded there. Various devices of that kind,
-also, have been used for a long time in naval warfare. The Confederates
-tried hard to destroy several Northern vessels in the blockading
-squadron by devising very small, half-submerged boats, towing torpedoes
-astern, or else projecting on a long spar from their bows; and now and
-then they succeeded, as when one of the latter kind was made to sink
-the _Housatonic_ off Charleston.
-
-[Illustration: THE SEARCH-LIGHT REVEALING THE TORPEDO-BOAT.]
-
-Then there have been invented, during the past fifty years, several
-cigar-shaped machines, which, by means of a chemical or compressed-air
-engine or clockwork, or some other application of power that might
-keep motive machinery within them going long enough, could be launched
-from shore or from another vessel and sent under water against a
-hostile ship. At first these were made to glide along just beneath the
-surface, carrying little flags that could be seen, and trailing two
-electric wires, enabling a person, by means of electric currents,
-to direct their flight; but latterly ingenuity has devised such an
-arrangement of rudders and self-acting balances within the torpedo’s
-mechanism that it will continue perfectly straight upon the course
-it is aimed for, swerving neither right nor left, up nor down, and
-will explode the instant it touches an object hard enough to jar the
-delicate cap of fulminate in its snout. This latter kind, called the
-automobile (self-moving) torpedo, is now almost exclusively used, and
-some modification of the Whitehead is most popular. It is cigar-shaped,
-and about twelve feet in length; the forward third is filled with
-gun-cotton—in quantity sufficiently powerful, if accurately applied, to
-ruin almost instantly the greatest battle-ship afloat.
-
-[Illustration: A SELF-MOVING TORPEDO ON ITS WAY TO ATTACK A MAN-OF-WAR.]
-
-All large war-ships are now fitted with tubes, opening near the
-water-line in various parts of the hull, which form gun-like exits for
-these terrible weapons, which are set in motion by a puff of gunpowder;
-but in addition to this every maritime government now has a number
-(Great Britain has more than 250) of small, swift steamers designed
-wholly for this purpose and called torpedo-boats. Most of them are a
-hundred feet or so in length, and intended to accompany the fleet
-wherever it goes and in all weathers; but some are so small that they
-may be carried on the deck of a big cruiser.
-
-All are made long, low, and narrow, and the speed of many of them
-exceeds thirty miles an hour. There is almost nothing to catch the wind
-or show above deck except a pair of short, flattened smoke-stacks, one
-behind the other; and the steersman stands, with only his head and
-shoulders visible, in a little box with windows that serves the purpose
-of a wheel-house. A mere wire railing saves the crew from sliding off
-the deck, and in action everybody stays below. No weight is carried
-that can be avoided, and the engines, taking steam from two boilers,
-are as powerful as can be packed into the space at command. Usually
-only coal enough for a few hours’ steaming is carried, and every bushel
-of it is carefully selected as to quality, and is so treated and
-intelligently fed to the furnaces as to make the hottest possible fire,
-although never a spark must escape from the smoke-stack to betray the
-vessel in the darkness.
-
-[Illustration: A TORPEDO-BOAT AT FULL SPEED.]
-
-Next to speed the most important quality is ability to turn quickly,
-upon which might often depend the safety of the audacious little craft.
-
-Torpedo-boats, however, are designed for a wider service than simply
-to carry and discharge the frightful weapon from which they take their
-name. They are to the navy what scouts and skirmishers are to a land
-army. They form the cavalry of the sea, of which the cruisers are the
-infantry, and the battle-ships and monitors the artillery arm. They
-must spy out the position of the enemy’s fleet, hover about his flanks
-or haunt his anchorage to ascertain what he is about and what he means
-to do next. They must act as the pickets of their own fleet, patrolling
-the neighborhood, or waiting and watching, concealed among islands or
-in inlets and river-mouths, ready to hasten away to the admiral with
-warning of any movement of the adversary.
-
-[Illustration: ONE FORM OF SUBMARINE TORPEDO-BOAT.]
-
-It is not their business to fight (except rarely, in the one particular
-way), but rather to pry and sneak and run, for the benefit of the fleet
-they serve.
-
-But to insure all these fine results, both officers and men must be
-taught the art. Constant instruction and drilling are necessary, and
-in each navy a regular school of torpedo-practice is maintained, where
-the subject is studied in every way. In the United States such a school
-is kept at the Newport (R. I.) Torpedo Station, where the torpedoes
-themselves are fitted for use and supplied to the ships (the loaded
-war-heads are kept separately in the ship’s magazine), and where one or
-more torpedo-boats are reserved for drilling purposes.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY C. E. BOLLES, BROOKLYN, N. Y.
-
-THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “MAINE.”
-
-Blown up in the harbor of Havana, February 15, 1898.]
-
-But a worse and more insidious foe than even these sneaking, hiding,
-surface torpedo-boats threatens us in the submarine torpedo-boat, which
-inventors have been experimenting with since naval warfare first began.
-It is said that twenty-five hundred years ago divers were lowered
-into the water in a simply constructed air-box, to perforate the
-wooden bottom of an adversary’s war-galley and sink it. Again, in our
-Revolutionary War, a tiny walnut-shaped boat was made by an American,
-which was actually tried. It would hold one man, and air enough for him
-to breathe for half an hour. He would close the hatch, let in enough
-water to sink him a little way, and then scull himself along by means
-of a screw-bladed stern-oar until he got underneath the keel of an
-anchored vessel, to which, by ingenious means, he would attach a can of
-gunpowder to be fired by clockwork, giving him time to get away. It was
-actually tried and nearly succeeded. Robert Fulton, who made the first
-success of the steamboat, tried for years to contrive a submarine boat
-that would work, and succeeded so far as to scare British blockaders in
-1812 very badly indeed; and the Confederates repeated the scare when
-the North was blockading their ports in the Civil War.
-
-The great advantage of a submarine boat is, of course, its
-invisibility, and its safety from shot even if discovered; but the
-difficulties of progress and control as to depth and direction under
-water, and at the same time effective appliance of the explosive and
-safe retreat, are so many that they have as yet been only partly
-overcome. If the thing is ever accomplished, naval warfare will be
-demoralized until some adequate means be found to combat this unseen,
-destroying agency.
-
-[Illustration: _Vesuvius_ in action.]
-
-The principal agent in submarine attacks would probably be some form
-of dynamite, which, inhuman as its use seems, is slowly but surely
-taking its place among the weapons of war. The United States has one
-vessel primarily designed to employ dynamite by hurling it in the form
-of shells. This volcanic craft is suitably named _Vesuvius_, and is
-a small, swift vessel having long tubes slanting upward through her
-forward deck, as shown in the illustration.
-
-These tubes are the muzzles of great air-guns, through which she sends
-darts loaded with dynamite to fall upon a hostile ship or fort. It
-would not be safe, to say the least, to fire such bombs with gunpowder;
-and therefore pumps and engines in her interior compress air until it
-has acquired an expansive force sufficient for the purpose. When one
-of the darts has been laid in the breech of the tube, down beneath the
-deck, and suitably closed in, a valve is opened, the compressed air
-acts like burning powder, and away goes the dart, in a graceful curve
-to its target. In this case, of course, it is the vessel rather than
-the immovable gun that is aimed, and good marksmanship depends upon
-accurate calculation of distance; but remarkable shooting has been
-done. This system has never yet been tried in actual warfare, and may
-prove valuable chiefly in clearing harbors of mines.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII
-
-THE MERCHANTS OF THE SEA
-
-
-The history of shipping in an earlier chapter will also answer as a
-history of early international commerce. It began with the Egyptians
-and Phenicians, and was confined to their parts of the Mediterranean
-until after the middle ages, when it moved steadily to the western
-borders of Europe.
-
-How great, rich, and influential were Tyre and its people we have
-already seen. A thousand years before the Christian era they controlled
-the commerce of the ancient world by reason of their wisdom as traders
-and their skill and energy as navigators and seamen. Turn to the
-twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, and see how the Phenician metropolis
-was regarded, even in the time of that prophet, six hundred years
-before Christ. These Syrians had gradually extended their commerce
-until it took in the whole known world; and by their caravans to
-and from the interior of Arabia, Persia, India, and the Soudan, by
-their trains (perhaps of pack-horses) across Europe, by their marine
-expeditions to the Nile,—which they forced open to trade, for ancient
-Egypt was much like China in its exclusiveness,—and by their ships to
-all the Mediterranean ports, and up and down the Atlantic coast, they
-gathered and exchanged in the bazaars of Tyre and Sidon the products,
-manufactures, and luxuries of every country that had anything to sell.
-To the Phenicians, indeed, was ascribed, by the Latin and Greek writers
-of a few centuries later, the invention of navigation; and even when
-Phenicia had become of little account as a nation, its conquerors noted
-with admiration the skill of the men of that coast in seamanship.
-“They steered by the pole-star, which the Greeks therefore called the
-Phenician star; and all their vessels, from the common round _gaulos_
-to the great Tarshish ships,—the East-Indiamen, so to speak, of the
-ancient world,—had a speed which the Greeks never rivaled.”
-
-Later, in the days of the Roman supremacy, the trading-ships were as
-important to the country as its soldiers, for nearly every free man was
-in the army, and the slaves made poor farmers. A large part of the
-grain, as well as cattle, to supply the wants of the people, had to be
-brought from Egypt, which was pretty sure to have “corn,” as the Bible
-calls it, when the rest of the world was suffering from short crops.
-Egypt supplied grain to Rome during the second Punic war, thus enabling
-her to resist the invasion of Carthage, and it is possible that Rome’s
-later political alliance with Egypt was largely due to her interest in
-Egyptian crops. Large fleets of grain-ships, convoyed by armed vessels,
-were continually passing between the African coast and the Tiber, and
-so many were the risks they ran of wreck or capture, that the arrival
-of a flotilla with its precious freight of food was always a cause of
-rejoicing, at any rate, among the poor.
-
-These merchant ships of classical times were broader and heavier
-than the war-galleys, and although they carried a few oars to help
-themselves in a difficulty, they ordinarily moved by means of sails,
-probably lugs. One of the grain-ships plying between Egypt and Italy
-about 150 A. D., according to Lucian, was one hundred and eighty feet
-long, slightly more than one fourth as broad, and forty-three and a
-half feet deep inside,— more like a barge than a “ship.” The largest
-used in this trade would carry about two hundred and fifty tons. The
-transports that accompanied one of Justinian’s fleets, A. D. 533, are
-stated to have carried one hundred and sixty to two hundred tons of
-supplies each.
-
-These Roman vessels were made of pine, and were coated with a
-composition of tar and wax, then painted, often with elaborate
-decorations in bright colors, with pigments mixed with melted wax. Now
-and then one was built of truly vast proportions, as that one which
-brought from Egypt to Rome the first of the stolen obelisks.
-
-[Illustration: A CAPTAIN IN THE MERCHANT MARINE.]
-
-With that grand awakening of interest in education, industry, and
-discovery which took place in the fourteenth century, the city of
-Venice gained the lead in power, and her merchants became the most
-enterprising and wealthy. It was the expansion of commerce that urged
-the explorations that marked the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
-for by this time Venice had her banks—the first in the world to
-approach the character of modern banks—and her exchange on the famous
-Rialto bridge; Genoa was in close rivalry; Spain was gathering immense
-quantities of gold in South America; and England was coming to the
-front as a maritime power. The trade with Cathay—as India, China, and
-the Oriental islands were called collectively—was chiefly by caravans
-across the Persian deserts, and Spain, England, and Holland had
-small shares in it, since the only water-route known was through the
-Mediterranean and Red seas, where, between the perils of the ocean,
-the extortionate charges and stealings of the Arabs (who carried the
-cargoes from vessel to vessel across the Isthmus of Suez), and the risk
-of capture by Algerian pirates, there was little chance left for profit
-to either merchants or ship-owners.
-
-To western Europe, then, Vasco de Gama’s discovery of the route around
-the Cape of Good Hope was a long advantage, and England and Holland
-at least were quick to seize it. The great “East India Companies” of
-the Dutch and English were formed by a group of powerful merchants
-in London and in Amsterdam, who were given vast privileges by their
-governments in respect to trading in the East. The Dutch company was
-not founded until 1602, two years after the English company, but it
-soon became the more prominent of the two, and was one of the principal
-means by which the Netherlands secured the preponderance of the
-carrying trade of the world, bringing to her ports, by the middle of
-the seventeenth century, almost all the commerce previously enjoyed by
-Cadiz, Lisbon, and Antwerp, and making very serious inroads upon that
-of London and Bristol. The Dutch East India ships, copied from the
-Genoese carracks, were the biggest merchant vessels then afloat, well
-able to cope with many of the war-ships; and two hundred of them were
-at this time engaged in the Asiatic trade alone.
-
-[Illustration: A CLIPPER ESCAPING FROM THE “ALABAMA.”]
-
-It was in aid of the English rival company not only, but as an attempt
-to save and revive the commercial position of England generally, that
-Cromwell’s “navigation laws” were enacted, prohibiting the carriage
-of goods to or from British shores except in ships owned and manned
-by Englishmen,— laws that were aimed directly at the Dutch, and led
-to the long wars of the latter half of the seventeenth century. These
-were called wars for the supremacy of the sea, but actually they were a
-prolonged struggle for the biggest share of the world’s trade, which is
-the only real value of the “supremacy of the sea.” It is a saying that
-“trade follows the flag,” and so it does; but at the beginning the flag
-goes were the trade is to be had.
-
-These companies were so mixed up in the politics of their respective
-governments that it would be a long task, although entertaining, to
-trace their growth, which is really that of western civilization in the
-East. They equipped fleets of merchant and war vessels, established
-forts, carried on small wars along the Oriental coasts, and were really
-little kingdoms within kingdoms, because of their wide monopoly,
-enormous wealth, and the national importance of all their enterprises.
-The final result was that, as Great Britain finally overcame the Dutch
-and French at home, so her East India Company ousted them from India;
-but it was not until 1858 that old “John Company,” which had come to
-be regarded by the natives of India as the government itself, was
-dissolved, and resigned its territories to the crown and a system of
-trade open to all the world.
-
-Those were slow and costly times compared with the present, though
-seeming to us full of a romance impossible now. A voyage around the
-world occupied three years, and to go from London to Calcutta and
-back took from New Year’s to Christmas under the most favorable
-circumstances. Another important change, too, has gradually come about.
-Formerly, the vessels were owned almost entirely by the merchants
-themselves, or by a company of them; they paid all a ship’s expenses,
-and put into her a cargo of their own wares. They would send to China,
-for instance, cotton goods, household furniture, hatchets, tools,
-cutlery and other hardware, farming implements, and fancy goods of all
-sorts. In return the vessels would bring silks, tea, and porcelain,
-which would go into the owners’ warehouses and be sold in their own
-shops. Shipper, importer, and merchant were all one.
-
-Now this is changed. The importers and merchants of London, Hamburg,
-and New York are not often those who own vessels and bring their own
-goods. Instead of this they have agents, who live permanently in each
-of the foreign ports, where they buy the merchandise they want and hire
-a vessel, or the needed space in a vessel, belonging to somebody else
-to bring them home. By the old way, the nation which had anything to
-sell carried it to the nation that would buy it, and brought back the
-best thing it could get in exchange; now the merchants go to various
-parts of the world, buy their cargoes, and order them sent home, in
-substantially the same way as you go a-shopping in town.
-
-This has brought out a new department of sea-labor, unknown, as a
-class, a century ago—the business of carrying goods which the owners of
-the vessels have no property in. In London, New York, Hamburg, and all
-other seaboard cities of this and other countries, the great majority
-of the shipping is owned, not by the merchants of the city, but by
-“transportation companies,” who agree to carry cargoes at a certain
-rate.
-
-[Illustration: THE SALOON OF A SAILING PACKET-SHIP, ABOUT 1840.]
-
-Merchant vessels may be divided into three classes, of which the first
-includes steamships and sailing-vessels planned primarily for freight
-transportation, which run back and forth between certain ports, and
-so constitute “lines” for freight. Such lines exist along even the
-remotest coasts, so that goods may be shipped directly, or by a single
-transfer, from any given seaport to almost any other in the world.
-Some of these lines, sailing between certain ports, are devoted to
-particular uses, such as those of oil-steamers and cattle-steamers. The
-oil-steamers run between America and Europe with American petroleum,
-and in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean with oil from Russia; the
-entire holds are divided into vast iron tanks for this liquid, which is
-poured into and pumped out of them as into and out of a great barrel.
-The cattle-steamers are specially arranged for the transportation
-of live stock, but one line, running between America and England,
-also carries passengers at a cheap rate. The second class of vessels
-consists of those which make the transportation of passengers their
-first object, loading their holds with first-class freight, for which
-high rates are paid in consideration of its swift delivery. The
-third class includes what are known as “tramp” steamers, which run
-irregularly, as the old sailing-vessels used to do, picking up cargoes
-wherever they find them and carrying them to any port. They are often
-of great size and power, but being under less close supervision are
-often less careful as to the safety of crews and cargoes, and are
-sometimes unseaworthy. They are always ready to answer any sudden
-demand for ships, their owners keeping watch of the chances and
-telegraphing to their captains where to go for their next cargoes.
-Without the submarine telegraph these tramp steamers could scarcely
-compete with the regular lines; but, besides the great transoceanic
-cables, all the sea-coasts are now festooned with electric cables,
-which have frequent stations and connect the important ports of America
-and Europe with those of Africa, Persia, India, the Spice Islands,
-Australia, and New Zealand, and there is now a plan to run a cable
-across the Pacific between America and New Zealand, by way of the
-Sandwich Islands, Samoa, and Fiji.
-
-[Illustration: A CORNER IN THE SALOON OF A MODERN STEAMSHIP.]
-
-The passenger-ship is a distinctly modern feature of marine carriage.
-In former days the few persons who were obliged to cross the seas on
-business errands, and the fewer who went abroad for health or pleasure
-or the love of travel, had to accept such rough accommodations as the
-ordinary merchant ships afforded. But as soon as the East and West
-Indies were added to the map of the world, and colonies of Europeans
-began to settle on distant coasts and islands, the amount of travel
-justified owners of vessels in enlarging cabins and providing comforts
-likely to induce patronage of their lines. Even two hundred and
-twenty-five years ago the voyage between India and England around
-the Cape of Good Hope, though it became somewhat tedious, because it
-lasted six or seven months, was by no means a miserable experience in a
-well-found ship. Thus Dr. John Fryer has recorded of such a sea-journey
-in 1682 that “it passed away merrily with good wine and no bad musick;
-but the life of all good company, and an honest commander, who fed us
-with fresh provisions of turkies, geese, ducks, hens, sucking-pigs,
-sheep, goats, etc.”
-
-A century later, when England had come firmly into possession of
-India, and thousands of her officers, troops, and traders, with their
-families, were colonizing her ports, there were demanded the largest
-and finest ships that could be built, combining accommodations for
-many passengers with great cargo capacity. Such were the great East
-Indiamen; and in those leisurely days a trip half-way round the world
-on one of these roomy old vessels was a continuous pleasure to almost
-every one that undertook it.
-
-  The ship was a bit of Old England afloat, where the passenger rented
-  for so many months a well-lighted, roomy, unfurnished apartment,
-  which, according to his taste and means, he fitted up for the voyage
-  with numberless comforts and sea stores that none but a yachtsman
-  would think of cumbering himself with at sea to-day; and, reading
-  narratives of the old long sea-voyages, one is constantly coming
-  across expressions of regret by passengers when they “took leave of
-  the good ship that for so many months had been their floating home.”
-  These fine old passenger sailing-ships were, like a man-of-war,
-  entirely dismantled at the end of each homeward voyage, and underwent
-  a complete overhaul and refit before starting out again on an outward
-  one. Passengers usually sold their state-room furniture by auction on
-  board the ship on her arrival in port.
-
-Such a ship, the Atlantic packets, and even men-of-war bound on a long
-blockading cruise, did not hesitate to stow aboard all the live stock
-that room could be found for, sometimes by comical devices. In that
-book of charming reminiscences of ways and means afloat before the days
-of quick steam transit, “Old Sea Wings,” Mr. Leslie has a chapter which
-he calls “The Old Ship-Farm,” where one may learn curious particulars
-of this matter.
-
-  The man in charge of this part of the stores was the ship’s butcher,
-  and he had as “mate,” or assistant, a youth of all work known to all
-  sailors as “Jemmy Ducks.” Their barn, or storehouse, was especially
-  the great long-boat, which often looked more like a model of Noah’s
-  ark than a craft serviceable in case of shipwreck.
-
-  Always securely stowed amidships, well lashed down and housed
-  over, the boat, as she lay upon the ship’s deck, was full of live
-  provender, being divided, as to her lower hold, into pens for sheep
-  and pigs, while upon the first floor, or main deck, quacked ducks
-  and geese, and above them (literally in the cock-loft) were coops
-  for another kind of poultry. This great central depôt was closely
-  surrounded by other small farm-buildings, the most important being
-  the cow-house, where, after a short run ashore on the marshes at the
-  end of each voyage, a well-seasoned animal of the snug Alderney breed
-  chewed the cud in sweet content. In fact, when, in the old days, a
-  passenger-ship began her voyage, the hull of her clumsy long-boat was
-  nearly hidden by the number of temporary pens and sheds required to
-  house the live stock for the supply of her cabin table; and with its
-  many farm-yard and homelike sounds a ship was, even then, more like a
-  small bit of the world afloat than it is now.
-
-There was always regular traffic between America and Europe, especially
-with Great Britain, and the rapid growth of emigration to the United
-States and Canada made it profitable, early in this century, to put
-on fast-sailing packet-ships, making voyages, at intervals of a
-month, between London and New York. By 1840 a man might find a large,
-well-ordered ship departing every week or so for the transatlantic
-passage, which usually required less than a month going east, but might
-be two weeks longer coming west. Their cabins were as comfortable and
-perhaps more homelike than any seen now, and quite as pretty, with
-their white and gold paint, cut-glass door and locker knobs, damask
-hangings, dimity bed-curtains, and other old-fashioned niceties; and
-the fare was abundant and varied, as it ought to be in a neat ship with
-a small dairy aboard, and perhaps a green-salad garden planted in the
-jolly-boat. None of these packets were more popular than those of the
-well-remembered Black Ball Line.
-
-
-[Illustration: FAIR WEATHER ON THE DECK OF A CLIPPER-SHIP CARRYING
-GOLD-SEEKERS TO CALIFORNIA IN 1849.]
-
-
-The steerage passengers were not so well off then, though they seemed
-to stand the voyage quite as well as nowadays. The fare was twenty-five
-dollars, and the passenger found himself “in everything but fire and
-water.” “Steerage passengers then had to cook their own victuals,
-weather permitting, at an open galley-fire on the waist-deck; ... but
-in anything like rough weather, all steerage passengers had either
-to run the chance of getting constantly wet with salt water or keep
-below.” The ’tween-decks space allotted to them was almost completely
-filled by rows of bunks, built in each port by the ship’s carpenter,
-in three tiers, one above the other, though the ceiling was scarcely
-seven feet from the floor; and when in a stormy time the hatches were
-closed the only way the crowd could find room was by most of it stowing
-itself away in the bunks, while a few tried to sit or lie on the
-luggage piled in the narrow aisles. The only light was that of a few
-candle or whale-oil lanterns, and in a very bad storm everybody came
-near smothering, for then it was impossible to ventilate the steerage
-properly without flooding it. Considering that all the provisions for
-the steerage people were kept in this crowded, damp, and fearfully
-close room, it is marvelous that a pestilence did not break out during
-every voyage, but, in fact, sickness was rare.
-
-The introduction of steam into oceanic navigation was experimented with
-as soon as river steamboats were successfully built. The first vessel
-to go across the ocean by the aid of a steam-engine is said to have
-been the _Savannah_. This vessel, built in Savannah, Ga., and having a
-steam-engine and paddle-wheels, certainly crossed to Liverpool in 1819;
-but it is asserted that she sailed all the way, using her steam very
-little, if at all, although making the trip in twenty-two days. In 1825
-the English steamer _Enterprise_ went from London to Calcutta; but it
-was not until some years later that ocean navigation by steam became
-successful in the beginning of operations by the Cunard Company in 1833.
-
-These first steamers were side-wheelers, and their huge boilers and
-simple engines consumed so much fuel that the space taken up by the
-coal, added to that devoted to passengers, left little room for cargo.
-Moreover, their speed was less, often, than that of the “clippers,” so
-that for some time the sailing-packets maintained their competition.
-The adoption of the screw propeller, in place of the costly and
-cumbersome side-paddles, and the perfection of the compound marine
-engine, which effected a great saving in fuel, soon established the
-superiority of steam navigation for passenger service, fast freights,
-and service in war, yet even these improvements were not fairly brought
-about until the first half of the present century had gone; and sails
-are not yet abandoned, not only because they steady a vessel in a gale,
-and may help her decidedly when the wind is fair, but may save her
-altogether in case of the disabling of her machinery.
-
-  Great modifications and improvements on old models have grown out of
-  the employment of steam and the screw, and human invention has been
-  taxed to the uttermost to combine economy of space and expense with
-  the various needs of different climes, or special cargoes, or the
-  demands of a traveling public that is growing more fastidious every
-  day. The most obvious changes in naval construction have been in the
-  greatly elongated hull, the enormous dimensions aimed at, and the all
-  but universal employment of iron. When the first steamship crossed
-  the ocean the proportions of ships averaged three to five beams in
-  length.... But it was discovered that with a given power and depth
-  and beam the length could be increased without materially affecting
-  the speed, thus adding to the carrying capacity of steam. Great
-  length to beam, however, does not necessarily imply great speed; the
-  speed of beamy vessels has too often been demonstrated. Fineness of
-  lines is equally essential, together with the proper distribution
-  of weights, and the like. The great average speed exhibited by the
-  modern steamship is due in large part to the momentum of such a vast
-  weight, which, once started, has a tremendous force.
-
-Long after the transatlantic steamships were regularly running, sixteen
-or seventeen days was considered a good passage between New York
-and Liverpool. Then the Inman and White Star lines began to see the
-importance of faster speed, and their rivalry had cut this estimate
-in two by 1870, and ten years later the Guion Line’s _Arizona_ and
-other crack boats took a full day off that. Since then there has been a
-steady improvement in speed, as is shown by the table below; and this
-seems to have followed proportionately the steady increase in length.
-The ships of 1850 never reached 300 feet in length, and few were over
-2300 tons in burden measurement. By 1880 almost all the first-class
-“liners” of the world exceeded 450 feet, and some soon approached
-600, as the _City of Rome_ (586 feet, 8826 tons), and several of the
-famous Hamburg liners, White Stars, and Cunarders nearly equaled her
-in dimensions (_Paris_ and _New York_, 580 feet each; _Teutonic_ and
-_Majestic_, 582 feet); while some of the more recent boats are even
-longer, as _Campania_ and _Lucania_, 620 feet, and the gigantic _Kaiser
-Wilhelm der Grosse_, 648 feet. Two other ships, now planned, will
-considerably exceed this length. The total number of transatlantic
-passenger-steamships regularly sailing from New York alone is now
-between 90 and 100, belonging to 14 different lines. The table of
-speed-records between New York and Queenstown, since the time was
-reduced to less than six days, is as follows:
-
-                                                        Time.
-  Year. Steamer.    Line.    Direction.  Date.    Days. Hours. Min.
-  1882 _Alaska_   Guion       Eastward  May 30      6     2      0
-                                          to
-                                        June 6
-  1891 _Majestic_ White Star                        5    18      8
-  1891 _Teutonic_ White Star  Westward  Aug. 13-19  5    16     31
-  1892 _Paris_    American    Westward  Aug. 14-19  5    14     24
-  1893 _Campania_ Cunard                            5    12      7
-  1894 _Lucania_  Cunard      Westward  Sept. 8-14  5     8     38
-  1894 _Lucania_  Cunard      Eastward  Oct. 21-26  5     7     23
-
-  The approximate distance between Sandy Hook (light-ship), New York,
-  and Queenstown (Roche’s Point) is 2800 miles. The fastest day’s run
-  on record, however, was made by the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_,
-  of the Nord Deutscher Lloyds Line, averaging 22.35 knots (or
-  nautical miles, of 6080 feet each) per hour, equal to about 25½ land
-  miles. From Sandy Hook to Queenstown deduct 4 hours 22 minutes for
-  difference in time. Queenstown to Sandy Hook add 4 hours 22 minutes
-  for difference in time.
-
-This eager rivalry in respect to speed, which insures not only a larger
-and more influential passenger service, but increased business in fast
-freight and in the carriage of mail—both highly remunerative—is only
-one feature of the sharp competition between these ocean carriers as to
-which shall offer the greatest advantages, and this is of benefit to
-the public, though it has not greatly cheapened fares.
-
-
-[Illustration: EMIGRANT PASSENGERS EMBARKING UPON A TRANSATLANTIC
-“LINER.”]
-
-Men travel far more now than they were wont in the time of “good Queen
-Bess,” or even of our own grandfathers, and the few travelers for
-pleasure of those days would scarcely believe their eyes if they could
-look into the floating palaces—almost cities—in which we brave old
-ocean now. A ship of one of the better passenger lines is a little
-world in itself, containing almost all the appliances of the best
-modern hotels on shore, and reducing the inevitable inconveniences of
-life on shipboard by clever devices of every sort. In the one matter of
-ventilation the ingenuity of the builders is particularly taxed. Money
-is spent lavishly in the finishing and furnishing of these great ships,
-not to mention the expense of running them, which sometimes amounts in
-cost of fuel, food, and wages to $5000 a day.
-
-The steamship lines between New York and Great Britain do not steer
-straight across the Atlantic, but on their way to this country keep
-well to the northward, so as to get to the west of the Gulf Stream, and
-into the favorable current flowing south from Baffin’s Bay; then they
-skirt Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod. Going east, however,
-the steamers—and sailing-vessels too—keep farther south, and work
-along with the Gulf Stream as far as they can. From Europe to South
-America, or through the Straits of Magellan on their way to the South
-Sea islands or Australia (though this route is not often taken), or to
-the Pacific coast of the Americas, vessels keep close down the African
-coast, and then steer straight ahead from Guinea to Brazil, and on
-down the American coast. (Put a map before you and you will understand
-these courses better.) Sailing-vessels to Europe or the United States
-from Cape Horn, however, would swing far out into the South Atlantic
-to avoid heading against the southward coast-current and to get the
-benefit of the southwest trade-wind and the equatorial currents.
-Between New York and the Cape of Good Hope the track is nearly straight.
-
-In the Pacific, the steamer-route between San Francisco or Vancouver
-and China and Japan, instead of being as direct as a parallel of
-latitude, takes a southerly course when bound west, and a northerly
-course when bound east, the exact lines varying with the seasons as the
-prevailing winds and currents change. What these winds and currents
-are is explained in another chapter; but it is interesting to note
-that there is a difference of many miles in the ordinary westerly and
-easterly courses, the latter being much the shorter, although the
-vessels of the Canadian Pacific Line often sail so far north with the
-Japan warm current as to sight the Aleutian Islands. Sailing-vessels,
-moreover, curve so much farther south than steamers in going west from
-San Francisco, in order to take advantage of the equatorial current and
-the trade-winds, that the space is a thousand miles north and south
-between ships outward bound and those coming home. Between California
-and Honolulu a steamer takes a bee-line, but sailing-vessels find it
-best to make detours. In summer, when outward bound, this amounts to
-steering straight northward until under latitude forty degrees, before
-turning westward, making an angular course that looks very unnecessary
-to a landsman.
-
-[Illustration: A “WHALEBACK” FREIGHT STEAMER, ALSO ADAPTED TO PASSENGER
-SERVICE.]
-
-I have said that the finding of a sea-route to the East around the Cape
-of Good Hope was a great boon to western Europe, and advanced commerce.
-It remained so until within the last seventy-five years. Lately,
-the corsairs being out of the way, and safety guaranteed in Egypt,
-merchants and sailors both began to wish they had a shorter route
-between England and India. Then, with immense labor and sacrifice, the
-canal was cut across the Isthmus of Suez, and commerce returned to its
-ancient channel through the Red Sea, saving thousands of miles of weary
-distance.
-
-From the end of the Red Sea at Aden, the tracks of steamers both
-ways are straight courses to Bombay or Ceylon, and thence right up
-to Calcutta, across to Singapore, or down to Australia. Except East
-African coast lines, few steamers go around the Cape of Good Hope
-from England, excepting one line to South Australia, which steers
-straight eastward all the way from Cape Town to Adelaide, 6125 miles.
-But the Indian Ocean is so situated under the equator, is so filled
-with prevailing winds and currents and counter currents, that
-sailing-vessels must take very roundabout courses there, and can by no
-means steer the same track at all seasons of the year. These voyages
-from New York and London to the East are the longest regular sea-roads.
-A short table of distances between well-known ports along regular
-steamer-routes will be of interest; and by reversing them, or adding
-them together, the sailing distance between almost any two ports on the
-globe may be calculated.
-
-                                            MILES.
-  Acapulco to San Francisco                 1,850
-  Aden to Bombay                            1,635
-  Aden to Colombo (Ceylon)                  2,100
-  Aden to Zanzibar                          1,770
-  Auckland to Honolulu                      3,915
-  Auckland to Suva (Fiji)                   1,140
-  Cadiz to Teneriffe (Canaries)               698
-  Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro               2,350
-  Cape Town to Plymouth (Eng.)              6,016
-  Cork to St. John’s (N. F.)                1,730
-  Ceylon to West Australia                  3,305
-  Glasgow to New York                       2,790
-  Havre to Martinique                       3,560
-  Havre to New York                         3,160
-  Hobart (Tas.) to Invercargill (N. Z.)       930
-  Hong Kong to Manila                         650
-  Hong Kong to Shanghai                       800
-  Hong Kong to Yokohama                     1,620
-  Leith (Scot.) to Iceland                  1,050
-  Lisbon via Dakar (W. Af.) to Pernambuco   3,297
-  Lisbon to Cape Verd Islands               1,537
-  Liverpool to Barbadoes                    3,646
-  Lisbon to Para                            4,000
-  Liverpool to Lisbon                         983
-  Liverpool to Madeira                      1,430
-  Liverpool to New Orleans                  4,767
-  Liverpool to New York                     3,057
-  Liverpool to Para                         4,010
-  Liverpool to Quebec                       2,634
-  Marseilles to Algiers                       410
-  Montevideo to Magellan Strait             1,070
-  New Orleans to Havana                       570
-  New York to Colon                         1,980
-  New York to San Francisco, about         17,000
-  New York, via St. Thomas, to Para         3,130
-  Panama to San Francisco                   3,260
-  Porto Rico (San Juan) to Havana           1,030
-  Rio de Janeiro to Plymouth                4,941
-  San Francisco to Honolulu                 2,080
-  San Francisco to Yokohama                 5,280
-  Shanghai to Yokohama                      1,033
-  Singapore to Hong Kong                    1,430
-  Suez to Aden (length of Red Sea)          1,308
-  Suva to Honolulu                          2,783
-  Sydney to Auckland                        1,281
-  Sydney to Vancouver (B. C.)               6,780
-  Teneriffe to Porto Rico                   2,790
-  Trieste to Bombay                         4,317
-  Yokohama to Honolulu                      3,445
-  Yokohama to San Francisco                 4,750
-  Yokohama to Victoria                      4,320
-  Zanzibar to Bombay                        2,400
-
-[Illustration: Chapter end decoration showing ships]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII
-
-ROBBERS OF THE SEAS
-
-
-As the sea has furnished opportunities for so much good,—for manly
-exertion, knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with people outside
-of one’s own country, and for gaining wealth,—so it has given a chance
-for unscrupulous men to show the worst that is in them; and the
-guarding of shore towns and merchant vessels from piratical attacks has
-always been a part of the usefulness and duty of a nation’s naval force.
-
-As on land there are robbers and highwaymen, so on the ocean robber
-ships have often been lying in wait for vessels loaded with treasure,
-and have landed crews of marauders to make havoc with rich seaboard
-provinces. Such robbers on the high seas are termed pirates, and their
-crime was visited by the old laws with torturing punishments; yet they
-were never more daring than when the laws against them were severest.
-
-The word is Greek, and the first pirates who figure in history are
-those of the Greek and Byzantine islands and coasts—bloody ruffians
-who originated the amusing method of disposing of unransomed prisoners
-by making them “walk the plank,” as has been done within the present
-century.
-
-The intricate channels and hidden harbors of the Ægean Sea long
-remained a hiding-place of sea-robbers, and are still haunted by
-them, though every few years, from Cæsar’s time till now, the kings
-of the surrounding countries have sent expeditions to break them
-up. In the sixteenth century piracy in that region was especially
-prevalent. The crews then were chiefly Turkish, but the great leaders
-were two renegade Greeks, the brothers Aruck and Hayradin Barbarossa
-(“Redbeard”).
-
-[Illustration: WALKING THE PLANK.]
-
-It happened that Spain, having conquered the Moors of Granada in 1492
-and pursued her victories across the straits, had gained control of
-Algeria (at that time a collection of small Mohammedan states), and
-held it until the death of King Ferdinand in 1516. Then the Algerians
-sent an embassy to Aruck (sometimes spelled Horuk, or Ouradjh)
-Barbarossa, requesting him to aid them in driving out the Spaniards,
-and promising him a share in the spoils. He eagerly accepted this
-proposition, seeing a great deal more in it than the Algerians saw;
-and the moment the Spaniards had been beaten and expelled he murdered
-the prince he had come there to help, seized upon the city and port
-for himself, and made it the headquarters of that system of desperate
-piracy which became the dread of all Europe. These robbers of the sea
-called themselves _corsairs_, from an Italian word signifying “a race”;
-and they generally won, because they had the best and swiftest vessels
-of that time, such as feluccas, xebecs, and the like. The black flag
-which they flew was not blacker than their reputations, so that even
-yet to call a man as bad as a Barbary pirate is to mean that he could
-not be much worse if he tried. The Spanish colonies in America, a few
-years later, began sending home immense treasures dug in the silver-and
-gold-mines of Peru and Mexico, and extorted from the natives or stolen
-from the temples of those unhappy countries. A quantity of ingots and
-gold and silver ornaments equal in value to fifteen million dollars
-of our modern money was taken at one time by Pizarro, in Peru, as the
-ransom of the Inca Atahualpa, and booty amounting to a similar sum
-was gained in the sacking of various cities. This great inpouring of
-wealth caused a general giving up of manufactures and trade in Spain,
-and was one of the reasons of her final decline in power, and it had
-the immediate bad effect of making piracy more attractive than ever.
-The treasure-ships, though convoyed by war-ships, were often attacked
-and captured by the corsairs. Barbarossa’s fleets were more like
-armadas of a powerful nation than mere pirate craft; and whenever it
-happened that his commanders were defeated, they would land upon the
-nearest unprotected coast of Spain, France, or Italy, and pillage and
-burn some town in revenge. How galling this was to all merchants and
-travelers we can hardly understand in these days; but so strong were
-the corsairs that the fleets and armies of various governments, and
-even of the Pope, which were sent against them, could not gain their
-stronghold nor suppress their cruisers, at least for more than a short
-time. Charles V of Spain tried greatly to conquer them; but although
-his forces, attacking Aruck Barbarossa from the province of Oran, near
-Algiers, defeated and killed him, Hayradin (more properly spelled
-Khair-ed-din) Barbarossa succeeded his brother, and, placing himself
-under the protection of Turkey, continued to build up the power of
-the pirates. His first care was to fortify the city of Algiers, and
-he expended a great deal of money and labor on the perfection of the
-harbor, compelling all his prisoners and thousands of citizens to work
-as slaves on the defenses. Next he conquered Tunis, and was selected by
-the sultan as the only fit man to sail against Andrea Doria, the great
-Genoese naval commander of the Christians in their wars against the
-Turks early in the sixteenth century. Mediterranean commerce became so
-unsafe that watch-towers were built all along the coasts, and guards
-were kept afoot to give alarm at the approach of the corsairs. Charles
-V gathered together a powerful armament, and sailed to the rescue of
-Tunis, recapturing it for its rightful sovereign in 1535; but he was
-never able to capture Hayradin Barbarossa, who lived out his life in
-Algiers as “a friend to the sea and an enemy to all who sailed upon
-it.” After his time the power of the pirates continued under other
-leaders; and not Algeria alone, but Tripoli, Morocco, and even Tunis,
-harbored piratical vessels in every port, and the rulers shared their
-spoils; piracy, indeed, was the source of their national revenues, and
-was encouraged by the Sultan of Turkey inasmuch as all these states
-were his vassals.
-
-Every few years some European power—Spain, France, Venice, or
-England—would lose patience, send a fleet, and open a campaign that
-would be successful in destroying certain strongholds, releasing a
-crowd of prisoners, and burning or sinking many ships. The city of
-Algiers was bombarded almost into ruins in 1682, and the job completed
-a year later, after the Algerians had tossed the French consul out to
-the fleet, with their compliments, from the mouth of a mortar. They
-were fond of such jokes. Nevertheless, the city speedily recovered, and
-piracy, complicated by Moslem fanaticism and Turkish politics, harassed
-commerce during all the next century, partly because Europe was so busy
-in its own wars that it had no time for outside matters, and partly
-because it was for the advantage of certain nations (particularly
-of Great Britain, which, in possession of Gibraltar and Port Mahon,
-might have suppressed this villainy) to let the corsairs prey upon
-its foes—especially France. The actual result was that most or all of
-the European powers fell into the custom of paying to Algiers, Tunis,
-Tripoli, and other rulers of the Barbary (or Berber) States large sums
-of money as annual tribute to restrain them from official depredations
-upon their coasts and commerce, besides other large payments for the
-ransom of such Christian prisoners as each sultan’s lively subjects
-continued to take in spite of treaties.
-
-In this shameful condition of affairs the newly independent United
-States was obliged to join during the first years of its existence, to
-secure immunity for our commerce in the Mediterranean, because we had
-not yet had time to create a navy. By the end of the century, however,
-the United States was able to defend itself at sea, and in 1801
-answered the insults of Tripoli by bombarding its capital seaport until
-the dey sued for mercy and promised to behave himself. Nevertheless,
-he needed another lesson, and in 1803 a second American fleet was sent
-to the Mediterranean, commanded by Preble, in the _Constitution_,
-with such subordinate officers as Bainbridge, Decatur, Somers, Hull,
-Stewart, Lawrence, and others that later became famous. One incident
-of this campaign, which began by frightening the Sultan of Morocco at
-Tangier into abject submission, but was especially directed against
-Tripoli, is well worth remembering.
-
-[Illustration: THE “ARGUS” CAPTURING A TRIPOLITAN PIRATE FELUCCA.]
-
-Captain Bainbridge, going alone in the fine frigate _Philadelphia_ into
-the harbor of the city of Tripoli, had unfortunately run aground, and
-there, overpowered by the number of his enemies afloat and ashore,
-had been compelled to give up his ship, and find himself and all his
-crew taken prisoners. He managed to get word of his misfortune to
-Commodore Preble at Malta, and that officer at once took his fleet to
-Tripoli—Decatur, in the _Argus_, gallantly capturing on the way one
-of the great lateen-sailed piratical crafts of the enemy, which later
-proved a useful instrument in the contest. The fleet blockaded Tripoli
-for a while, and shelled the fortifications somewhat, just to give the
-bashaw a hint, and to encourage the poor prisoners; but none of the big
-vessels was able to enter the narrow, tortuous, and ill-charted harbor
-in the face of the many batteries, under whose guns the _Philadelphia_
-could be seen at anchor with the Tripolitan flag at her main, so they
-sailed away to Syracuse to make preparations for reducing this nest of
-barbarians. Gunboats of light draft and mortar-vessels had to be fitted
-out; but the first thing was to try to carry out a plan that Decatur
-and all his friends had been maturing ever since they had arrived—the
-destruction of the _Philadelphia_, not only because she had been
-refitted into a powerful weapon in the hands of the enemy, but because
-it was galling to national as well as naval pride to see her flying a
-foreign flag. The plan was this:
-
-Decatur was to take a picked crew of seventy officers and men on
-the captured felucca (renamed _Intrepid_), and attempt at night to
-penetrate to the inner harbor of Tripoli in the disguise of a trader,
-supported as well as possible by the gun-brig _Siren_, also disguised
-as a merchantman. As his pilot was an Italian and a competent linguist,
-it was hoped the ketch could get near enough to set fire to the ship,
-whirl a shotted deck-gun into position to send a shell down the main
-hatch and through her bottom, fire it, and escape before the surprise
-was over. The chances of failure were enough to daunt the bravest, yet
-every man in the fleet wanted to go.
-
-On February 15, 1804, Decatur in his felucca, and Somers commanding the
-brig, found themselves, toward evening, again in sight of the town,
-with its circle of forts crowned by the frowning castle. The great
-_Philadelphia_ stood out in bold relief, closely surrounded by two
-frigates and more than twenty gunboats and galleys. From the castle and
-batteries 115 guns could be trained upon an attacking force, besides
-the fire of the vessels, yet the bold tars on the _Intrepid_ did not
-quail.
-
-The crew having been sent below, the pilot Catalona took the wheel,
-while Decatur stood beside him, disguised as a common sailor. It
-was now nine o’clock, and bright moonlight. Standing steadily in,
-they rounded to close by the _Philadelphia_, and, boldly hailing her
-deck-watch, asked the privilege of mooring to her chains for the night,
-explaining that they had lost their anchors in the late storm, and so
-forth, until at last consent was given.
-
-Having dragged themselves close to the frigate, it was the work of only
-a moment to board her with a rush, overpower her surprised crew, and
-make sure of her destruction by means of the combustibles and powder
-they had brought with them. Before their task was done, however, they
-had been discovered, and it is almost a miracle that they were able to
-return to their felucca, and make their way out of the harbor, through
-a rain of harmless cannon-balls; yet they did so, and Decatur was
-justly honored for one of the most gallant exploits in naval annals.
-
-A few weeks later Preble’s squadron shelled the pirate city and
-fortresses into ruin, forced Tripoli as well as Algiers and Tunis
-to respect them and thenceforth the American flag, and gave these
-arrogant rulers the new sensation of paying instead of receiving money
-for bad deeds. It put an end to the corsairs.
-
-Turkish and Barbary pirates were not the only ones in the world,
-however. Although the old Norwegian vikings and rough Norman barons did
-not go under that name, they were scarcely anything else, in fact, as
-the neighboring peoples could testify, though this was far back before
-modern history began. But when the Spaniards and the French began
-to colonize the West Indies, and to dig mines in South and Central
-America, not only were the Barbary corsairs given a fresh incentive,
-but a new set of pirates sprang up, the most daring that the world has
-ever seen.
-
-As the archipelago east of Greece had sheltered the hordes of the
-Turkish sea-robbers, so the many islands, crooked channels, reefs
-unknown to all but the local pilots, small harbors, and abundant food
-of the Antilles, made the West Indies the safest place in the world
-for pirates to pursue their work. To these new and wild regions, in
-the sixteenth century, had flocked desperados and adventurers from all
-over the world. When the wars with their chances of plunder died out
-after the campaigns led by Cortés, Pizarro, Balboa, and the rest of the
-Spanish _conquistadores_, many ruffians seized upon vessels by force,
-or stole them, and turned into robbers of the sea. At first, as a
-rule, they had farms and families on some island, and went freebooting
-only a portion of the year. The island of Hayti, or Santo Domingo,
-was then settled by farmers, hunters, and cattlemen, the last-named
-of whom, mainly French, passed most of their time in the interior of
-the island, capturing, herding, or killing half-wild cattle and hogs.
-But the monopolies which Spain imposed upon the colonists interfered
-with the market for their produce and induced an illicit trade, which
-led to frequent encounters with the Spanish navy. As the constant wars
-between Spain and France and England increased the difficulties of
-trade, large numbers of the colonists joined the freebooters, who then
-became extremely numerous and formidable, losing their old name and
-becoming known by that of the cattlemen—buccaneers, from the French
-word _boucanier_.
-
-First Santo Domingo, then Tortugas, and finally Jamaica were
-headquarters of the buccaneers, who were made up of men of all nations,
-united by a desire to prey upon Spain as a common enemy. They were
-thousands in number, possessed large fleets of ships and boats, were
-well armed, and finally formed a regular organization with a chief and
-under-officers. The most noted of these chiefs, perhaps, was Henry
-Morgan, a Welshman, who was at one time captured and taken home to
-England for trial. To his own surprise, instead of being executed,
-he was knighted by Charles II, who had not been at all grieved at
-seeing Spanish commerce harassed; and Morgan was returned to Jamaica
-as commissioner of admiralty, where at one time he acted as deputy
-governor, using his opportunity to make it unpleasant for those of
-the buccaneers with whom he had formerly had disagreements as to the
-distribution of prizes.
-
-The earlier buccaneers found ample plunder in the Spanish fleets. They
-patrolled the sea in the track of vessels bound to and from Europe, and
-seized them, allowing or compelling the crews to become pirates, or
-else to be killed or carried into slavery. This work, however, employed
-only a portion of the buccaneers; and early in the seventeenth century,
-as the commerce of Spain declined, it became too uncertain a means of
-wealth to suit them. But the rich Spanish settlements still remained;
-and often, therefore, they equipped a great fleet, enlisted men under
-certain strict rules as to sharing the spoils, and sailed away to
-pillage some coast. There was hardly an island in the West Indies from
-which, in this way, they did not extort immense sums of money under
-threat of destruction of the people. The mainland also suffered from
-the marauders. Great cities, like Cartagena in Venezuela, Panama on
-the Isthmus, Mérida in Yucatan, and Havana in Cuba, were attacked
-by armies of buccaneers numbering thousands of men. Sometimes their
-fortifications held good, and the enemy was beaten back; but sooner or
-later all these cities, and others, smaller, were captured, robbed of
-everything valuable that they contained, and burned or partly burned.
-
-For years the buccaneers were the terror of the Caribbean region, and
-after the famous sacking of Panama, under Morgan, in 1671, their power
-spread across the Isthmus and scourged the southern seas. We have no
-way of knowing the amount of the treasure which they captured from the
-merchant vessels and from the coast of Peru; for the moment they got
-home from an expedition they wasted all their booty in wild carousing,
-so that the spoils earned by months of exposure, and wounds, and danger
-of death, would be spent in a single week.
-
-At last even England and France, after secretly favoring the
-buccaneers, became roused to the necessity of controlling them, and
-it was with this object in view that a certain Captain William Kidd
-was fitted out at private expense toward the end of the seventeenth
-century, and armed with King William’s commission for seizing pirates
-and making reprisals, England being at war with France. Just why it
-was, nobody has explained, but Captain Kidd spent his time in loitering
-around the coast of Africa, where no pirates were to be found, until he
-grew quite disheartened, and, fearing to be dismissed by his employers
-and to be “mark’d out for an unlucky man,” he started a little pirate
-business for himself, in which he gained more of a certain kind of
-fame than any of the rest; for popular tradition supposes him to have
-hoarded his booty and buried it. “Captain Kidd’s treasure” has been
-sought for until the whole eastern coast of the United States is
-honeycombed with diggings for it; but probably he had eaten and drunk
-it up before 1701, when he was captured and executed in England. About
-this time, however, and without his valuable aid, the combined naval
-forces of all the nations interested in the commerce of the New World
-broke the power of the buccaneers, and their depredations ceased. Their
-story is one of the wildest, most romantic, and most terrible in the
-history of the world.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  “In revel and carousing
-  We gave the New Year housing,
-  With wreckage for our firing,
-  And rum to heart’s desiring.”
-]
-
-The trade of piracy was carried on during the eighteenth century in the
-region of the West Indies by unorganized bands of desperados who had
-all the faults and none of the greatness of the men they succeeded, and
-who received little attention from the world at large. At the beginning
-of the nineteenth century the Barataria pirates came into notice on
-the coast of Louisiana, taking the place of the buccaneers, but in a
-much smaller way. Their leaders, Pierre and John Lafitte, carried on
-business quite openly in New Orleans; and their settlements on the
-marshy islands along the coast, and their “temple,” to which persons
-came out from the city to buy goods, were open secrets. But in the
-War of 1812, although the British tried to buy their services, they
-redeemed themselves by standing true to the American government, which
-had just been trying to exterminate them, and so they won public pardon
-and an added glamour of romance.
-
-For the same reasons as those in the case of other island systems, the
-East Indies have always been infested with pirates, whose light, swift
-vessels run in and out of the intricate channels among the dangerous
-coral reefs, where government cruisers dare not follow, while the
-people on shore sympathize more with the pirates than with the police.
-
-The East Indian sea-robbers are, as a rule, natives of that
-region—Malays, Borneans, Dyaks, and Chinese, with many half-savages
-of the South Sea Islands. This is more like a continuance of savage
-resistance to civilization than real piracy, since the pirates of the
-Atlantic are civilized sailors in mutiny against their own people
-and national commerce. The result is just as bad, however; for these
-East Indians are as bloodthirsty and cruel as the others, and if they
-do not kill their victims, or save them for some cannibal feast (as
-would probably happen in the New Hebrides and some other islands),
-they condemn them to a life of misery. But in these days of improved
-sea-craft, piracy, even in Malayan waters, is weak. Our consuls and
-government agents watch suspicious vessels; our telegraph warns the
-naval authorities in a moment; our steam-cruisers outspeed the swiftest
-craft of the black flag; our rifled guns silence their cheap artillery;
-and our coast surveys furnish maps so accurate that the pirate no
-longer holds the secret of channels and harbors where he can safely
-retreat. If, therefore, the old “Redbeards” should come back to life
-and try to be kings of the sea, as they rejoiced to be a couple of
-centuries ago, their pride would soon be humbled, and they would gladly
-return to their graves and their ancient glory.
-
-There is a form of sea-roving which has been at times not very
-different from piracy; it is called _privateering_, and history shows
-a good many cases where it has degenerated into sea-robbery pure and
-simple.
-
-A privateer is a ship, owned by a private citizen or citizens, to which
-authority is given by a government to act as an independent war-vessel.
-Its commission is called a “letter of marque” (_lettre de marque_ in
-French), entitling it to “take, burn, and destroy” a certain enemy’s
-property on the sea or in its ports. It has no right, of course, to
-attack any one else.
-
-The object and plea of the government issuing commissions to privateers
-is that thus a great many more armed vessels can be sent afloat
-than the government has money to equip, and that consequently far
-more damage will be done to the enemy, by crippling his trade and
-resources, than regular men-of-war alone can accomplish. Private
-capital has been willing to take the risk because rewarded by a large
-share of the prizes; and from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of
-the eighteenth century this was one of the most profitable of marine
-industries, for then nearly universal wars made almost any capture
-legitimate. In the earlier times even the limited regulation that came
-later was absent, and there was small choice between a privateer and
-a pirate. Queen Elizabeth found the hundreds of privateers which she
-had commissioned against the Spanish and Dutch preying upon her own
-people, and robbing fishermen, coasters, and small shore towns, to such
-an extent that she had to suppress them as bandits. Those were the
-times when Hawkins could use a royal fleet to wage war upon the Spanish
-colonies for private reasons; and when his ablest lieutenant, Drake,
-could make his notable journey around the world a history of robbery
-and slaughter. On the west coast of South America he spent months in
-destroying Spanish vessels and ravaging and burning settlements; yet
-it was thought remarkable, when he returned from his circumnavigation
-of the globe, that the Queen hesitated somewhat before recognizing his
-great achievements as a seaman, for fear of complications with Spain!
-
-[Illustration: MALAY PIRATES ATTACKING A STEAMER.]
-
-Spain, in those days of first harvest from her American possessions
-and the East Indies, was the prey of everybody on the high seas able
-to rob her, and formalities were joyously disregarded by both sides.
-Her galleons carried precious cargoes of spices, silks, and East India
-goods around the Cape, and brought silver ingots and gold bars from the
-Spanish Main. They were usually convoyed by regular war-ships, and had
-to run the gantlet of the enemy’s fleets whenever Spain happened to be
-openly at war with somebody, as was usually the case; and otherwise
-must escape buccaneers in West Indian waters, Malayan and Chinese
-pirates in the far East, and irregular sea-rovers along the West
-African coast, while the corsairs made the Mediterranean route doubly
-dangerous.
-
-[Illustration: PAUL JONES’ FIGHT IN THE “BON HOMME RICHARD” WITH THE
-“SERAPIS.”]
-
-The gradual growth of organized navies, the development of
-international law, and the increasing organization of the civilized
-world generally, slowly tamed these wild practices and reduced
-privateering to some sort of control. Thus Jean Bart, the popular
-hero of French naval history, who flourished toward the end of the
-seventeenth century, was recognized and supported by the French monarch
-as a free-lance in the Mediterranean, because his humble birth
-prohibited him from taking a commission in the regular navy, which
-amounted to a sort of apology for his deeds.
-
-During the wars of the United States with England privateering was
-extensively practised on both sides, and was of especial value to the
-Americans. Congress issued private commissions as early as March,
-1776, and the ablest statesmen upheld it as a means of employing the
-ships, capital, and thousands of seamen that must lie idle when the
-enemy’s cruisers were ranging the ocean highways unless permitted to
-arm themselves and assist the government in an irregular warfare,
-trusting to the value of their captures for remuneration. That the
-chance of such reward was enough inducement is shown by the fact that
-during the first year of the Revolution nearly three hundred and fifty
-British vessels were captured, chiefly West Indiamen, worth, with their
-cargoes, five million dollars. As Great Britain did not recognize
-the flag of the United States, not only these, but even our regular
-naval officers, were regarded by them as pirates, rather than true
-privateers—Paul Jones first of all; but she never acted on this theory
-with the severity that would have been visited upon true pirates.
-
-In the naval warfare that came later between the United States and
-France, privateering again flourished, and was a source of immense
-profit to the principal seaports whence these swift, effective Yankee
-vessels were despatched. No less than three hundred and sixty-five
-American privateers were sent out between 1789 and 1799, and swept the
-seas almost clean of the French merchant flag.
-
-Then came the second war with Great Britain, which was fought over
-a question of the sea rather than of the land,—the right of search
-claimed by the British,—and once more American and British privateers
-swarmed upon the highways of commerce. Of our merchant ships in all
-parts of the world, about five hundred were lost; but this was more
-than paid for, since our two hundred and fifty privateers captured or
-destroyed, during the three years and nine months of the conflict, no
-less than sixteen hundred British merchant vessels of all classes.
-
-This disparity of results was largely due to the greater number of
-English merchant vessels, but is also to be credited to the superior
-speed and handiness of the Yankee vessels, most of which were
-“Baltimore clippers,” topsail-rigged schooners with raking masts, that
-could outsail and out-manœuver anything afloat. “They usually carried
-from six to ten guns, with a single long one, which was called ‘Long
-Tom,’ mounted on a swivel in the center. They were usually manned with
-fifty persons besides officers, all armed with muskets, cutlasses, and
-boarding-pikes.”
-
-An English writer, Mr. R. C. Leslie, is of the opinion that this type
-of vessel grew out of models in vogue in the West Indies, long before,
-for the small piratical craft that made those waters the terror of
-travelers.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY W. TABER.        ENGRAVED BY HENRY WOLF.
-
-UNITED STATES FRIGATE “CONSTELLATION” OVERHAULING THE SLAVER “CORA.”]
-
-These Baltimore clippers, too, enlarged and square-rigged, but still
-the fastest things on the western ocean, formed the craft with which
-the slave-trade was continued between Africa and America long after
-it had been condemned by the civilized world. For many years previous
-to the American Civil War, which put an end to the larger part of the
-traffic by destroying its market, England and the United States kept
-squadrons patrolling the African coast to arrest the slavers and free
-their “cargoes.”
-
-What wild, wild tales of the sea do these reminiscences of piracy,
-privateering, and the slave-chase bring to mind—tales of horror, and
-yet full of such deeds of daring and romance and fierce delight as must
-stir the heart in spite of brain and conscience!
-
-Pirates are things of the past—no more to be feared except in a small
-way in the Malayan and Chinese archipelagoes. The African slave-trade
-is extinct, so far as shipment across the ocean is concerned, save
-where, now and then, an Arab dhow steals with its black cargo along
-the East African foreland, or flits across the Gulf of Aden or the Red
-Sea. Privateering has been forbidden by international treaty among the
-larger European powers, which now recognize that trade goods, even
-of belligerents, must be held safe in the ships of neutrals (except
-articles declared contraband of war), because the business of the
-world cannot stop, or even be put in jeopardy, by a quarrel between
-two nations. Privateering, therefore, has been abandoned in Europe
-as a method of war since the treaty of Paris in 1856, though Prussia
-came pretty near it in 1870, by organizing what she called a volunteer
-fleet, and Spain reserves the privilege of commissioning privateers.
-
-The United States, however, and some other countries whose policy
-or ability forbid them to have a large navy, would not enter into
-the European agreement above mentioned, mutually to abstain from
-privateering, on the plea that to do so would be to yield the most
-powerful weapon of a nation weak in naval armament and sea commerce,
-against any of many possible enemies whose large sea-borne commerce
-would expose it to the most serious wounds. In our Civil War the
-President issued no letters of marque, although authorized to do so.
-It was customary to speak of the Confederate cruisers _Alabama_,
-_Shenandoah_, _Florida_, etc., as privateers, or even pirates, and
-they actually played the part with a success woeful to us of the
-North, and to Great Britain, which had to pay for the damages caused
-by the _Alabama_; but, strictly speaking, they were neither, because
-commissioned by a temporary but regular government, whose flag might
-have been recognized if its arms had succeeded.
-
-[Illustration: Cannon.]
-
-More lately (1898) the United States has announced it as its policy to
-refrain from privateering, though no formal signature has been given to
-any international agreement to that effect.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  STEAM YACHT. “HALCYON.” SANDY HOOK LIGHT-SHIP. “VOLUNTEER.”
-  “MAYFLOWER.”
-
-A SPIN OUT TO SEA.—WELL-KNOWN YACHTS ROUNDING THE SANDY HOOK LIGHT-SHIP.
-
-(From the painting by J. O. Davidson, owned by F. A. Hammond, Esq.)]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX
-
-YACHTING AND PLEASURE-BOATING
-
-
-Yacht is a word derived from the Dutch language, which has given to
-the English so many of its sea-terms, meaning, originally, a fast
-boat, such as was built for chasing pirates and smugglers, and, later,
-a pleasure-boat. The latter meaning alone is now kept in view by the
-word, which is properly applied to anything designed and used for
-pleasure-sailing, whether moved by sails, steam, or electricity.
-
-In Great Britain, where yachting, as we now understand it, arose, it
-was not until about 1650 that races between pleasure craft began to
-be sailed on the Thames and in the quiet waters about the Isle of
-Wight, while the first yacht-club was not formed until 1720 (at Cork,
-in Ireland). Even then, a century elapsed before yachting as a sport
-attracted much attention even among the British, famous for their love
-of the sea. In 1812 a “yacht-club” was founded at Cowes, in the Isle
-of Wight. It received a new impetus and became the “Royal Yacht-Club”
-in 1817, the Prince Regent having joined it, and in 1833 was again
-reorganized by King William III as the “Royal Yacht Squadron,” the
-designation it bears to-day. It carried on races, or regattas, as they
-soon came to be called (borrowing from the Italians a term descriptive
-of the old Venetian gondola races), but all sorts of cruising-boats
-were matched against one another, classified by a tonnage rule with no
-allowances for size or any of the systems by which contestants are now
-classified and equalized.
-
-By this time, however, there was peace on the North Atlantic, and many
-a good seaman was free to turn his attention to enjoying and improving
-the tools of his profession. By this time, also, the Americans had made
-great headway as ship-builders and seamen, and by rivalry with the
-Old World for trade, and by experience in the Newfoundland fisheries
-and the West Indies fruit-trade, had acquired a skill in building and
-rigging ships that astonished the world by their speed and weatherly
-qualities. It was natural that these ideas should influence pleasure
-craft on this side of the water, as Great Britain’s long sea-struggles
-had influenced its sailors; and when, in 1844, the New York Yacht-Club
-was founded, the conditions were favorable for beginning that home
-development of yachting as a sport which was soon to place the
-Americans and Canadians among the leading yachting peoples of the
-world, and to lead to those international tests of speed that nowadays
-excite so wide-spread and intense an interest.
-
-[Illustration: “AMERICA” (AS ORIGINALLY RIGGED) AND “MARIA.”]
-
-The great preponderance in numbers and value of pleasure-vessels in
-the United States, and in the number of clubs and club-members, is due
-not only to our large population and long coast-line, but to the great
-extent of inland waters furnished by our rivers and interior lakes, and
-to the prevalence of bays or protected lagoons, such as Narragansett
-Bay, the Great South Bay of Long Island, New York harbor, Delaware
-and Chesapeake bays, and the long series of “sounds” that border the
-southern Atlantic coast from Barnegat to Biscayne. The Great Lakes are
-bordered by yacht-clubs on both sides, and furnish space and weather
-for quite as serious work as tries the skill of ocean navigators,
-while a hundred smaller lakes make fine pleasure-waters and excellent
-training-grounds for fresh-water sailors.
-
-Though the first regatta in America was sailed in 1845, little over
-half a century ago, the evolution of American yachts began with the
-building of the sloop _Maria_ by Robert L. Stevens, one of that family
-of remarkable inventors, who had already devised the first practical
-screw-steamer, and afterward created the _Monitor_. Her model, as we
-learn from an excellent article in “The Century” for July, 1882, by S.
-G. W. Benjamin, was suggested by the low, broad, almost flat-bottomed
-sloops employed to steal over the shallows of the Hudson and the
-Sound—vessels depending upon beam rather than on ballast for stability,
-and imitated by many of our coasters, which are so stiff that they
-sometimes make outside voyages without either cargo or ballast; but
-the _Maria_ had a long, sharp, hollowed bow, whence she expanded aft,
-with little taper at the stern, so that her deck-plan was that of an
-elongated flat-iron. The principal novelty about her, however, was the
-use of two “center-boards.”
-
-A center-board is a plate of wood or metal, suspended, usually by a
-corner pivot, within a sheath or box in the waist, which can be let
-down through the keel into the water, so as to form an adjustable keel.
-It is the most convenient form of a very old device for preventing a
-boat’s drift to leeward, or tendency to capsize under the pressure of
-the wind. In earliest times, a mat was hung over the side. Later this
-was replaced by the leeboard, apparently a Dutch invention, which may
-still be seen on the canal barges in Holland, and which was a feature
-of the pirogues or periaugers (shallow double-ended sailing-canoes)
-that in early times formed almost the only type of small sail-boat in
-New York waters. Two other novel, foreshadowing features possessed by
-Mr. Stevens’ boat, were the use of rubber compressors on the traveler
-of the main boom to ease the strain of the sheet (rubber is applied in
-many places about modern rigging), and the bolting of lead to the keel
-as outside ballast.
-
-The _Maria_ justified the expectations aroused by these and other
-novelties in hull and rig by beating everything in existence, until
-a Swedish gentleman in New York constructed a much smaller boat, the
-_Coquette_, on very different lines, for although only sixty-six feet
-long she drew ten feet of water; and in a match on the open sea she
-beat the _Maria_ easily, showing the superiority of the deep-keeled
-model for windy weather.
-
-Profiting by these experiences and widely gathered information, a new
-designer essayed the task of making a still better yacht. This was
-George Steers, the son of a British naval captain and ship-modeler,
-who had become an American naval officer and was the first man to
-take charge of the Washington navy yard. He built several graceful
-and fleet-winged sloops, famous in their day, such as the _Julia_,
-David Carl’s _Gracie_, and many pilot-boats and ships. His most
-celebrated production, however, and the one which gave our yachtsmen
-an international reputation and established their method of pursuing
-recreation as the foremost American sport, was the _America_, from
-which the “America Cup” races take origin and name.
-
-The origin was really accidental. When the first World’s Fair was to be
-held at the Crystal Palace in London, one of the attendant festivities
-was a great national gathering of British yachts in their favorite
-harbor, Cowes, at which, it was announced, foreign yachtsmen were to be
-welcome, especially Americans. In preparation for it, John C. Stevens,
-of Hoboken, then Commodore of the New York Yacht-Club, and some of his
-friends, ordered a new yacht from George Steers with which to cross
-the Atlantic and meet the English racers. This new boat, completed in
-the spring of 1851, and named _America_, was schooner-rigged, but had
-raking masts, no topsails except a small main gaff, and only one jib,
-whose foot was laced to a boom. Such was the style of the day; but
-later she was changed in rig so as to carry far more and bigger sails,
-more like those of a modern schooner-yacht.
-
-The moment she arrived in Cowes, in the early summer of 1851, her
-superiority in speed was conceded, and no British captain would consent
-to meet her; but finally a match was extemporized, open to all nations,
-for which a prize was offered in the form of a cup presented by the
-Royal Yacht Squadron—not by the Queen, as usually said. Fifteen yachts
-responded, but none showed what it could do, for there was little wind,
-and the cup was awarded to the _America_ more in general acknowledgment
-of its excellence than because of any great performance there. Not
-much importance was attached to the incident, but the silver tankard
-was brought home and left to ornament Commodore Stevens’ drawing-room
-until 1857, when its owners dedicated it to the purpose of a perpetual
-challenge cup, in charge of the New York Yacht-Club, for international
-races under specified conditions. Fifteen years elapsed, however,
-before the first contestant appeared.
-
-The _America_ had differed prominently in shape from all her opponents
-at Cowes, by having fine hollowed bows and a wide stern, instead of
-the bluff bows and narrowing after part—the “cod’s head and mackerel’s
-tail” pattern—of English craft; she also had sails that hung very flat
-instead of bellying out under the wind as was the foreign style. In
-these directions British yachtsmen saw good, and tried to improve; but
-they would have nothing to do with center-boards, and clung to their
-cutter-rig. We, on the other hand, had gained ideas as to improving
-rig, especially in the schooners, and in the bestowal of ballast,
-outside and in.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY G. WEST & SON, SOUTHSEA, ENGLAND.
-
-“GENESTA,” “TARA,” AND “IREX”—THE BRITISH TYPE OF CUTTER OF 1884-85.
-
-“Galatea,” 1885, belonged to the same type.]
-
-At length, in 1870, an English schooner, the _Cambria_, came over to
-compete for the cup, and was pitted against a fleet of crack yachts
-off Sandy Hook; but again the wind was so light that the boats did
-little more than drift. The Englishman, nevertheless, was outdrifted
-by nine others, and the leader was the little sloop _Magic_, which
-became the custodian of the cup. The next year, however, another
-challenge was received, and the British keel-yacht _Livonia_ appeared
-and was defeated by the American keel-schooner _Sappho_, which, under
-a new rule, had won her right to defend the cup by first beating
-in preparatory ocean races all other rivals for the honor. As this
-contest was between single representative yachts, tried in five races,
-and in all sorts of weather, it was a fair and conclusive measure of
-comparative qualities. The next yacht to come after the international
-cup was the Canadian _Countess of Dufferin_, which was promptly
-defeated by the _Magic_ in 1876. Five years later another Canadian
-appeared, the _Atalanta_, differing from previous contestants in being
-a single-masted center-board yacht; but her rigging and finish were
-so bad that her excellent model could not save her from defeat (1881)
-at the hands of the elegant iron sloop _Mischief_ which had been built
-especially for the race, and had won her foremost place through severe
-trial races, as before.
-
-Up to this time, as Mr. W. P. Stephens tells us in “The Century”
-for August, 1893, whence many of the portraits of these racers have
-been taken, no pleasure-boats had been built except after the rule
-of thumb—some practical sailor whittled out a model according to his
-ideas, and the builder followed it.
-
-  Systematic designing was unknown, and ... one type of yacht was in
-  general use, the wide, shoal center-board craft, with high trunk
-  cabin, large open cockpit, ballast all inside (and of iron, or even
-  slag and stone), and a heavy and clumsy wooden construction. Faulty
-  in every way as this type has since been proved, in the absence of
-  any different standard it was considered perfect, and open doubts
-  were expressed of the patriotism if not the sanity of the few
-  American yachtsmen who, about 1877, called into question the merits
-  of the American center-board sloop, and pointed out the opposing
-  qualities of the British cutter—her non-capsizability, due to the
-  use of lead ballast outside of the hull; her speed in rough water;
-  and the superiority of her rig both in proportions and in mechanical
-  details.
-
-  A wordy warfare over these types raged for several years, gaining
-  strength with the building of the first true English cutter, the
-  _Muriel_, in New York in 1878, and bearing good fruit a year later
-  in the launching of the _Mischief_, an American center-board sloop,
-  but modified in accordance with the new theories. The plumb stem, the
-  straight sheer, and higher free-board, with quite a shapely though
-  short overhang, suggested the hull of the cutter, and though quite
-  wide—nearly twenty feet on sixty-one feet water-line—she drew nearly
-  six feet. Even with her sloop rig she was a marked departure from
-  the older boats of her class, especially as she was built of iron in
-  place of wood, and consequently carried her ballast, all lead, at a
-  very low point.
-
-One of the results of this controversy was the sending to this country,
-from Scotland, of a little ten-ton racing cutter, the _Madge_, purely
-to show what capabilities lay in “a deep, narrow, lead-keeled craft
-with the typical cutter rig.” The only American able to beat her was
-the _Shadow_, a famous Herreshoff sloop of unusual depth, and she did
-it but once. Nevertheless, the controversy was not decided in the
-United States, and the Britishers thought it worth while to try to
-give us another lesson. In 1884 they launched two big cutters, _Irex_
-and _Genesta_, and in 1885 a third, _Galatea_; and Sir Richard Sutton,
-owner of _Genesta_, and Lieutenant William Henn, R. N., owner of
-_Galatea_, challenged for the America Cup.
-
-Then the question arose: What should be done to meet them? The British
-cutters differed from those previously met, in that they were built
-for racing, not for general use—were “racing machines” instead of
-cruising-yachts. To meet this, a scientific designer of marine vessels,
-Mr. A. Cary Smith of New York, was called upon to produce a moderately
-deep, center-board, iron sloop-yacht on the lines of the _Mischief_,
-but much larger, and he produced the _Priscilla_. But while she was
-building there was quietly begun another yacht, the _Puritan_, owned
-and built in Boston from designs by an almost unheard-of architect, Mr.
-Edward Burgess, who previously to this performance had been renowned
-only as a student of insects!
-
-“The stout oak keel of the new _Puritan_ was laid upon a lead keel of
-twenty-seven tons, carried down into a deep projecting keel; the plumb
-stem, the sheer, and the long counter suggested the British cutter
-rather than the American sloop; the draft of eight feet six inches was
-greatly in excess of all of the old center-board boats, and the rig was
-essentially that of the cutter rather than of the sloop.”
-
-A struggle decided that she was better than the _Priscilla_, and in
-the cup races in September she proved herself better than the famous
-English cutter _Genesta_.
-
-[Illustration: THE CUTTER “MURIEL,” SHOWING THE ENGLISH DEEP-DRAFT TYPE
-OF BUILD AND RIG.]
-
-Nevertheless, when the _Galatea_, whose challenge had been postponed
-until 1886, came out, the _Puritan_ had already been distanced by
-an American rival, the _Mayflower_, practically a larger copy of
-herself, as _Galatea_ was of _Genesta_, and, therefore, a lead-keeled
-center-board boat, having a cutter-like rig. Trial races showed that
-the _Mayflower_ was able to beat all her beautiful predecessors, and
-again the British contestant was obliged to take a defeat and leave the
-prize in New York.
-
-The result of this last contest (1886) was to cause British yachtsmen
-to abandon their old tonnage rule of measurement and adopt the far
-better modern one of load-line and sail-area measurement. Another
-challenge immediately came from Glasgow, supported by a boat named
-_Thistle_, built under the new rule; and to oppose it Mr. Burgess
-built the _Volunteer_, which differed from its predecessors mainly in
-increased draft and tendency toward the cutter model. She easily beat
-the _Thistle_, and the discouraged foreigners rested for some years
-before trying again to wrest from us the coveted trophy.
-
-[Illustration: “PURITAN.”]
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY J. S. JOHNSTON AND PURVIANCE.
-
-“MAYFLOWER.”]
-
-In 1891, however, there came to New York, from the yards of the
-Herreshoff Brothers, in Rhode Island, a new forty-six-foot yacht, which
-soon put the fame of the _Volunteer_ and all her glorious rivals into
-the background. This was the _Gloriana_, “remarkable as a daring and
-original departure from the accepted theories.” The radical novelty in
-her form consisted in the great cutting away of her bulk under water
-while preserving the full extent of the water-line, and the making of
-a very deep, heavily loaded keel, trusted for stability. Her hull was
-also novel, consisting of a double skin of thin wood on steel frames,
-while the upper part of the hull projected excessively at both ends.
-She was everywhere a winner, and was immediately followed by a smaller
-boat, the _Dilemma_, whose keel was an almost rectangular plate of
-steel, the ballast, which alone was trusted for stability, being in the
-form of a cigar-shaped cylinder of lead bolted to the lower edge of the
-“fin,” as this kind of keel was appropriately styled. Many boats of
-this pattern were soon afloat, most of them highly successful at home
-and abroad, and carrying a surprising spread of canvas.
-
-The year 1893 brought another challenge for the cup in the person
-of Lord Dunraven, sailing the yacht _Valkyrie_, but he was met by a
-new, well-proved Herreshoff fin-keel, the _Vigilant_ (built of a new
-alloy—Tobin bronze), and handsomely defeated. The following season the
-_Vigilant_ went to England, and found herself equally overmatched by
-the _Britannia_, owned by the Prince of Wales, while _Valkyrie II_ was
-wrecked. In 1895 Lord Dunraven sent a second challenge, backed by a new
-_Valkyrie (III)_; and this produced a fresh American contestant, again
-designed and built by the Herreshoffs, named _Defender_. The races came
-off amid intense public excitement, outside of Sandy Hook, but were
-most unsatisfactory; “in the first, _Defender_ won; in the second,
-_Valkyrie_ was disqualified as the result of a foul, and Lord Dunraven
-declined to sail a third.”
-
-[Illustration: COMPARISON OF OLD AND NEW TYPES.
-
-  1. “America,” 1851, water-line 90 feet.—2. “Cambria,” 1868,
-  water-line 100 feet.—3. “Magic,” 1857-69, water-line 79 feet.—4.
-  “Sappho,” 1867, water-line 120 feet.—5. “Mischief,” 1879, water-line
-  61 feet.—6. “Puritan,” 1885, water-line 81 feet.—7. “Genesta,” 1884,
-  water-line 81 feet.—8. “Thistle,” 1887, water-line 86 feet.—9.
-  “Volunteer,” 1887, water-line 85 feet.—10. “Gloriana,” 1891,
-  water-line 45 feet.—11. “Wasp,” 1892, water-line 46 feet.—12. “El
-  Chico,” 1892, water-line 25 feet.]
-
-Such has been the history of this long series of races for the America
-Cup, and such the development of its defenders; but while they and
-their work have stimulated interest in yachting all over the world,
-they have really not influenced it greatly, because all of the later
-boats competing were not practical yachts, in which one might cruise
-and live afloat, and enjoy life with his friends, but “machines” in
-which every quality tending to comfort and safety was sacrificed to
-the requirements of speed. In fact, the owners of these “big boats”
-kept small, handy, comfortable yachts for their own enjoyment, and the
-racers were as a rule sailed by a skipper and crew of professional
-racing sailors.
-
-There are said to be over two hundred yacht-clubs in the United States,
-enrolling about four thousand yachts, an eighth of which are steam or
-electric boats, scattered wherever any water suitable for the sport
-exists. With the lakes and rivers we have nothing to do, except to
-say that the yachtsmen of Montreal and Quebec are really salt-water
-sailors, for they cruise in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and elsewhere at
-sea as well as their fellow-sportsmen of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
-At the other extreme the Havana Yacht-Club has American members who
-take their boats to the West Indies every winter. Bermuda is another
-favorite resort, and the scene of lively races with a local, narrow
-sort of craft, called a “flyer,” which will beat almost anything if
-only it can be kept right side up.
-
-  On the Pacific coast, ... wherever there is a bay that will afford
-  a harbor, and a town that will support people, the yacht is used as
-  a vehicle of pleasure.... Many of the San Francisco boats are large
-  schooners, a number are powerful sea-going sloops, while of smaller
-  craft there is an abundance of almost every type, although the New
-  York catboat and the flat-bottomed sharpie of Long Island Sound are
-  seldom met with, and seem not to be in favor.... Pacific yachters
-  appreciate the good points of the yawl, for the squalls which blow
-  over the waters of the west coast are sudden and severe, and no rig
-  meets these conditions of weather so well as does the yawl.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY W. TABER       FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER BLACKBURN.
-
-THE NEWPORT CATBOAT.]
-
-
-The most important and numerous yachting interest of the country,
-however, as would be expected, is along the northeastern seaboard,
-where, measured by numbers and the investment in boats, wharves,
-club-houses, and equipments generally, it surpasses any other district
-in the world. More than one hundred clubs exist between Maine and
-Philadelphia.
-
-  The earliest form of yacht [as Mr. F. W. Pangborn reminds us in “The
-  Century” for May, 1892] was, of course, a rowboat with a sail....
-  From the primitive sprit-sail pleasure-boat comes the ever-present
-  and universally favored center-board catboat, a type of yacht which,
-  for speed, handiness, and unsafeness, has never been surpassed.
-  Keel catboats are also built, but the typical American “cat” is
-  the center-board boat of light draft, big beam, and huge sail.
-  The two objectionable points about boats of this class are their
-  capsizability, and their bad habit of yawing when sailing before
-  the wind. Yet the cat is the handiest light-weather boat made. It
-  is very fast, quick in stays, and simple in rig; but it can never
-  become a first-class seaworthy type of yacht. It belongs among the
-  fair-weather pleasure-boats....
-
-[Illustration: RIG OF THE YAWL.]
-
-  From the center-board catboat grew the jib-and-mainsail sloop, a type
-  of yacht which has always been noted for its great speed and general
-  unhandiness. Small yachts of this kind are always racers, and the
-  interest in racing is sufficient to keep them in the lists of popular
-  boats. In design they are like the catboats, the only difference
-  being in their rig. These two boats, the center-board cat and the
-  jib-and-mainsail sloop, are what yachters call “sandbaggers”; that is
-  to say, their ballast consists of bags of sand which are shifted to
-  windward with every tack and thus serve to keep the yachts right side
-  up. A boat ballasted in this manner can carry more sail than rightly
-  belongs on her sticks, but she cannot be very safe or comfortable.
-  Her place is in the regatta. It is not beyond the truth to assert
-  that the sandbaggers constitute probably two fifths of the total of
-  small yachts. They will never cease to be popular, for the reason
-  that speed and sport are synonymous terms with a great many yachters,
-  and no one can deny that these boats, like Brother Jasper’s sun, “do
-  move.”
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY W. TABER, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER BLACKBURN.
-  ENGRAVED BY A. NEGRI.
-
-A SANDBAGGER SLOOP.]
-
-  Passing the sandbaggers, the next popular and most universally used
-  yacht is the ballasted sloop. A sloop may be a center-board boat,
-  or a keel boat, or a combination of both. She has only one mast and
-  carries a topmast. Her sails are many, and, like the cutter, she is
-  permitted to carry clouds of canvas in a race. Technically speaking,
-  a cutter differs from a sloop only in one point, as the terms “sloop”
-  and “cutter” really apply to the rig of the yacht. The cutter has a
-  sail set from her stem to her masthead; the sloop has not. This sail
-  is called a forestay-sail, and its presence marks the cutter-rig.
-  The term “cutter,” however, is usually applied to the long, narrow,
-  deep-keeled vessel, and has in common parlance grown to mean a boat
-  of that type. It is in that sense that it is generally understood.
-  It is worthy of notice that nearly all yachters who cruise about in
-  summer, and especially those who are fond of speedy boats, use either
-  sloops or cutters; and it is remarkable to see how much comfort can
-  be found in boats of these types, even when quite small....
-
-[Illustration: A SHARPIE.]
-
-  The average yachting man, if he be of that stuff of which good seamen
-  are made, soon finds his chief delight in being master of his own
-  vessel. He likes to feel that it is his skill, his prowess, his
-  intellect, that rule the ship in which he sails; and finding this
-  complete mastery of the vessel to be impossible aboard a big boat,
-  he longs for one which he can handle alone. This independent and
-  sportsmanlike instinct of the American yachter has culminated in a
-  liking for certain classes of very small boats,—“single-handers” they
-  are called,—and this liking has given impetus to the building of some
-  little vessels which are really marvels in their way. Simplicity
-  and handiness of rig have been considered in their construction,
-  and this has led in many cases to the adoption of what is known as
-  the yawl style, a rig which for safety and convenience has never
-  been surpassed by any other. The yawl is really a schooner with very
-  small mainsail. For small cruising-yachts it is an excellent rig,
-  and preferable to the cat rig. Cat-yawls are also in use; they are
-  merely yawls without jibs. With such rigs as these a yachter can go
-  alone upon the water without fear of trouble and with no need of
-  assistance. Naturally, with men of moderate means who love the water,
-  these small single-handers have become very popular. Some of them are
-  not over sixteen feet long, yet the solitary skipper-crew-and-cook,
-  all in one, of such a boat finds in his yacht comfortable
-  sleeping-quarters, cook-stove, dinner-table, and all necessary
-  “fixings.” The ingenuity displayed in fitting out the cabins of these
-  little boats is quite remarkable.
-
-[Illustration: A BUCKEYE.]
-
-  Of the many nondescript rigs which are applied to small yachts,
-  two are in common use. One of these is the sharpie, a simple
-  leg-o’-mutton rig used with flat-bottomed boats. Large sharpies
-  have been built with fine cabin accommodations, and such boats are
-  particularly adapted to the shoal waters of the South. They are fast
-  sailers, but owing to their long, narrow bodies and light draft, are
-  not always trustworthy. They are cheaper to build than boats of other
-  designs....
-
-  Buckeyes are favored only in the South. Originally the buckeye was
-  a log hollowed out and shaped into a boat, and was used by the
-  negroes. To-day, however, buckeyes are built upon carefully drawn
-  plans, and many of them are excellent vessels. They are common on
-  the coast waters south of the Delaware Bay, and are used chiefly for
-  hunting-boats, their cheapness, handiness, and roominess rendering
-  them useful to the sportsman. A true buckeye is a double-ender,
-  but some large ones have been built with an overhang stern, which
-  destroys the ideal and creates a new kind of craft.
-
-[Illustration: OLD-STYLE PIROGUE WITH LEEBOARD.]
-
-  A few years ago the sailing public was surprised by the appearance
-  upon the waters of a spider-like contrivance which its friends said
-  was a “catamaran.” This new claimant for yachting favor was like
-  the raft of the South Sea Islanders only in name; in fact, it was
-  not a catamaran at all, but a new device for racing over the water
-  by means of sails. Wonderful feats were predicted for the future of
-  the catamaran, and it certainly did accomplish something; but after
-  a long and fair trial (for the yachter, no matter how bigoted he
-  may be, will always try a new boat) it was discarded as a useless,
-  dangerous, and decidedly unsatisfactory kind of craft....
-
-  Leaving the discussion of the odds and ends of yacht styles, we
-  come, by natural progress, to a type which is destined to greater
-  popularity as time goes on, and yachters learn the ways of the sea
-  and the best methods of dealing with them. Although the schooner
-  is generally deemed a big yacht, it is nevertheless a fact that
-  small schooners are desirable boats to have, and that the number of
-  schooners of small tonnage is increasing. There is no denying the
-  advantage of the schooner’s rig over that of the sloop. A schooner
-  of forty feet is handier, safer, and less expensive to run than a
-  forty-foot sloop. The rig of the schooner is peculiarly adapted
-  to all weathers, and a small crew can handle such a vessel with
-  ease, when to manage a sloop of equal size would require the best
-  efforts of “all hands and the cook.” The reason for this is that the
-  schooner’s sails can be attended to one at a time, which is not the
-  case with the big-mainsail sloop.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER BLACKBURN.
-
-YACHTS WAITING FOR A BREEZE.]
-
-  It is the small yachter [Mr. Pangborn declares in conclusion] who
-  gives to the sport its wide popularity, and makes yachting so
-  universally loved by men who are fond of aquatic pleasuring. The
-  small yachter is everywhere upon the waters. From the coast of Maine,
-  from the shores of the harbor of the Golden Gate, from the beaches
-  of the Atlantic seaboard, and from the borders of the inland lakes,
-  he can be seen, all summer long, sailing about in his little vessel,
-  and enjoying in all its fullness the excitement and delight of this
-  most noble and health-giving sport. With a pluck and energy that
-  mark the true lover of the sea, and a tact and skill that bespeak
-  the real sailor, he handles his little craft, in fair weather and in
-  foul, in a manner that leaves no room for doubt as to its fitness for
-  the work which he is doing; for, whether he sail alone, or with the
-  help of his friends, or that of a hired man to run his boat, he is
-  always the master of his vessel,—which is seldom the case with the
-  proprietor of the big boat,—and is in reality a “yachtsman” under
-  all circumstances, at all times, and in all weathers. He must be
-  cool-headed and calm in times of peril, affable and courteous on all
-  social occasions, and generous and prompt to respond to all calls
-  upon his courage—in brief, a gentleman.
-
-[Illustration: THE “ADLER” PLUNGING TOWARD THE REEF AT SAMOA.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X
-
-DANGERS OF THE DEEP
-
-
-Neither ships of the stanchest steel, nor seamen however skilful, nor
-pilots never so knowing, can wholly avoid the dangers of a seafaring
-life. Experience in reading the signs of the ocean and of the skies,
-surveyors’ charts of coasts and harbors, added to the appliances of
-powerful modern machinery, have lessened the perils, it is true, since
-the old times; yet even now ships sail proudly out of sunny havens,
-their topsails watched by loving eyes till they disappear at sunset,
-and are never seen again. On a calm day in 1782 the great hundred-gun
-line-of-battle-ship _Royal George_ sank at her anchors in the harbor
-of Spithead, carrying down almost a thousand souls; thirty years ago
-the _Captain_, then one of the finest of England’s steam turret-ships,
-capsized at sea, and not a man survived. Each of these vessels was
-perhaps the best of its kind in the world. No better navigators exist
-than naval officers, yet they ran the historic old steam-frigate
-_Kearsarge_ on Roncador Reef, in the Caribbean Sea, in broad daylight,
-and left her there a total wreck. Not a year passes that does not
-record some dire calamity on the ocean, and many lesser accidents.
-
-The wild oceanic storms are responsible for fewer of these than
-anything else—I mean the mere power of wind and waves in the open
-sea. When a captain has sea-room, and knows in advance, as he almost
-always may, of the coming of a storm, so that he can make everything
-snug, the loss of his vessel, or even serious damage to her, is not
-common. Yet the mere violence of the gale has overturned, beaten down,
-and extinguished the greater part of the Newfoundland fishing-fleet
-again and again, and doubtless many of the ships that are recorded as
-“missing” have been sunk simply by overwhelming waves.
-
-Certain rare and extraordinary mishaps nevertheless may meet a vessel
-in the open ocean. One of these is a stroke of lightning, powerful
-enough to set a ship on fire in spite of her lightning-rods, and such a
-fire is likely never to be quenched. Another extraordinary occurrence
-would be an overwhelming waterspout, such as not infrequently is seen
-in the tropics, especially along the Chinese coast, where it often
-plays havoc with fishing junks. A third unusual, yet possible, peril
-is the meeting with those waves of sudden and extraordinary size and
-volume which sometimes engulf vessels in storms that otherwise might
-be safely weathered, or are surmounted only by a miracle, as it were.
-These are said to be produced in some cyclones, as one of the effects
-of that whirling form of storm, and are often called tidal waves, but
-the tide has nothing to do with their formation or progress.
-
-[Illustration: THE U. S. S. “ONEIDA” AFTER COLLISION WITH A STEAMSHIP.]
-
-To say that a ship in mid-ocean might be destroyed by an earthquake
-seems paradoxical and absurd, yet it is true. Whenever a subterranean
-convulsion occurs beneath or at the edge of the sea, the water will be
-agitated in proportion to its force. Strike a tub of water a gentle
-tap and see how its liquid contents shiver and ripple. Watch a railway
-train running at the edge of a body of water, and observe how the water
-trembles under the percussion of the wheels upon the ground.
-
-Earthquake shocks give rise sometimes to great disturbances, either by
-a direct jar to the water, or by setting in motion waves whose rolling
-does damage, especially in confined harbors. Sometimes a port will be
-suddenly invaded by a wave, the cause of which was an earthquake, which
-rolls in upreared like a wall, and carries death and destruction in its
-course. The principal port of the island of St. Thomas, in the West
-Indies, was once devastated by this means. The incoming wave is said
-to have been over forty feet high, and broke inland, destroying much
-property and causing many deaths. “So tremendous was this breaker that
-it landed a large vessel on a hillside half a mile from the harbor.”
-
-Such catastrophes are not uncommon in volcanic districts, where the
-ocean retorts with terrible vengeance when it is struck by the land.
-That appalling explosion in 1883 of Krakatoa, in the Strait of Sunda,
-was followed on neighboring coasts by a series of vast billows that
-rolled inland, deluging a wide extent of shore, sweeping away over 150
-villages, and crushing or drowning more than 30,000 persons. Within a
-few years the coasts of northern Japan have been inundated repeatedly
-by earthquake waves with similar dire calamities, and they are likely
-to occur again. Now and then earthquakes are felt even in the open sea,
-far from land. Thus, Captain Lecky, a scientific writer upon the sea,
-tells us that in one instance where he was present, the inkstand upon
-the captain’s table was jerked upward against the ceiling, where it
-left an unmistakable record of the occurrence; and yet this vessel was
-steaming along in smooth water, many hundreds of fathoms deep. “The
-concussions,” he says, “were so smart that passengers were shaken off
-their seats, and, of course, thought that the vessel had run ashore.”
-All this disturbance was, nevertheless, only the result of a shock at
-the bottom; and when the non-elastic nature of water is considered, the
-severity of the jar is not surprising.
-
-It would seem as though in the vast breadth of the “world of waters,”
-and with nothing to obstruct the view, two ships might easily give
-one another a wide berth; yet a collision is one of the ever-present
-dangers of voyaging, even far from land. It is to avoid this peril that
-all the maritime nations have agreed upon certain signals, and “rules
-of the road” which are the same in all parts of the world, and without
-which it would now be almost impossible to carry on commerce or travel
-on the water.
-
-The rules of the road say that when two vessels are approaching one
-another, head on, each shall turn off to the right far enough to avoid
-the other; that when two vessels are crossing one another’s courses,
-the one which has the other on her starboard (right hand) must turn to
-starboard (the right), and go behind the other vessel, while the latter
-continues along her course; and that a steam vessel must always get out
-of the way of a sailing vessel, one at anchor or disabled, or a vessel
-with another in tow.
-
-It is presumed that every ship will keep a sharp lookout, and that in
-the daytime two approaching ships will see each other in time to keep
-safely apart; but in the darkness of night none could be safe unless
-all carried lights by which the position and character of each could be
-determined.
-
-In ancient times this matter of lights at sea was a much more
-troublesome one than now. We know that the Roman navy managed it
-somehow, and had methods of signaling by lanterns and torches. In
-medieval and early times, say up to a couple of centuries ago, a ship’s
-lights were a much more conspicuous and bothersome part of her than
-now, when, indeed, electricity has simplified as well as perfected
-signaling as much as it has benefited general illumination on ship’s
-board. In such ships as those of the Armada, and long afterward, three
-huge lanterns made of ornamental iron-work, sometimes large enough
-to enable a man to move about inside them, surmounted the elevated
-after-quarter; and these were filled with dozens of great candles.
-How important candles were in the stores of one of these old ships is
-shown by the fact that we still call a merchant who outfits vessels a
-_ship-chandler_. Regular rules were formulated for judging of a ship’s
-position and movements, and how you ought to steer by the way these
-beacons grouped themselves. The introduction of whale oil gradually
-superseded candles and as the sperm-lamp did not require a glass house,
-smaller lanterns took the place of the big ones, until finally, by
-aid of lenses, reflectors, and kerosene, and still more lately by the
-use of electricity, ship’s lights have become the small, handy, and
-powerful ones they are to-day.
-
-The present rules as to lights are these—using the language of a United
-States navy officer, Lieut. John M. Ellicott, who has written many
-instructive and entertaining essays on sea-affairs:
-
-  When you face toward a ship’s bow the side at your right hand is
-  called the starboard side, and the side at your left hand is called
-  the port side. On her starboard side a ship carries at night a green
-  light, and it is so shut in by the two sides of a box that it cannot
-  be seen from the port side or from behind. On her port side she
-  carries a red light, and it is so shut in that it cannot be seen
-  from the starboard side or from behind. If the ship is a steamship
-  she carries a big white light at her foremast-head, but if she is a
-  sailing vessel she does not. This white masthead light can be seen
-  from all around except from behind....
-
-  It is for the red and green lights, commonly known as the side
-  lights, that the officer of the deck most intently watches (when the
-  lookout warns him that lights are in sight), for by them he can tell
-  which way the vessel is going. If her red light shows, he knows that
-  her port side is toward him and she is crossing to his left; if it is
-  her green light, her starboard side is toward him and she is crossing
-  to his right; but if both the red and green are showing, she is
-  heading straight in his direction.... If a vessel has another vessel
-  in tow, she carries two masthead lights instead of one; and when a
-  vessel is at anchor she has no side lights or masthead light, but a
-  single white light made fast to a stay where it can be seen from all
-  around her.
-
-  In rivers and crowded harbors it is often impossible to follow the
-  rules of the road; and sometimes even at sea the officer of the deck
-  of one vessel discovers that the other is not heeding the rules. Then
-  the steam-whistle is used to tell the other vessel what the first
-  is doing. Thus, one whistle means “I am going to the right”; two
-  whistles mean “I am going to the left”; and three whistles mean “I am
-  backing”; while a series of short toots means “Look out for yourself;
-  get out of the way!”
-
-  There is one class of vessels which is most annoying to those who
-  direct the course of large steamers. These are small fishing-vessels.
-  On the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, on the coast of Spain, and on
-  the coasts of China and Japan big fleets of these little vessels
-  are found at all times. They show no lights at night, preferring to
-  save the expense of oil, and take their chances of being sent to the
-  bottom; but when they see a big ship rushing down upon them, they
-  light a torch and flare it about. Often they pay for their folly with
-  their lives. The torch is seen too late, or not seen at all, and the
-  great iron bow of the steamship crushes into the frail little craft,
-  perhaps cutting her clean in two; and the unhappy fishermen sink into
-  the foaming wake of the churning propellers, leaving not a soul to
-  tell their wives what became of them.
-
-[Illustration: ELECTRIC-LIGHT SIGNALS AT SEA: ARDOIS SYSTEM.]
-
-Signaling with lights is principally of use to men-of-war, where, also,
-lanterns hung in the rigging in a particular order have a definite
-significance. For long-distance signaling the best system is that
-invented by Lieutenant Very, U. S. N. These night-signals “consist of a
-white, a red, and a green star, each fired into the air from a pistol,
-so that by firing one, two, or three of them in quick succession and in
-different orders, with a pause between the groups, different letters or
-signal numbers can be made until a sentence is complete.” They can be
-easily read from vessels twelve miles away. For nearer work the system
-of the Spanish navy officer, Ardois, which consists in flashing and
-extinguishing, by means of a switchboard on deck, a series of red and
-white electric lamps in the rigging, serves very well; and close at
-hand a signal-man waves an incandescent electric bulb by night as he
-would a flag by day.
-
-[Illustration: THE “VERY” ROCKET-SIGNAL AT SEA.]
-
-It is, however, when the land is approached that the sailor’s perils
-become menacing. Here Old Neptune is still a match for us when he
-asserts himself. Nevertheless, we must go upon the restless waters,
-and must risk a contest with their power along the coasts, where the
-ocean’s _line of battle_ may be said to be. Therefore, every effort
-has always been made by men on land to be of aid to their brethren at
-sea by erecting beacons to guide them by night as well as by day, by
-marking the channels, so that hidden shoals, rocks, and obstructions
-may be avoided, and by contrivances to save life and property when the
-fury of the gale renders seamanship futile, and the noble ship is cast
-away in the surf thundering on some wild shore, to break up in a few
-hours.
-
-What could be more humiliating to our pride, as well as terrifying to
-our hearts, than such a scene as that at Samoa, in 1889, when a whole
-fleet of ships, including powerful men-of-war, was wrecked while at
-anchor in the beautiful harbor of Apia. Of small use, then, were all
-their charts and lighthouses, buoys and breakwaters!
-
-The disturbed state of affairs in Samoa caused the assemblage there,
-during March, 1889, of three small German men-of-war, _Adler_,
-_Olga_, and _Eber_, the British corvette _Calliope_, and the American
-steamships _Trenton_, _Vandalia_ and _Nipsic_. The _Trenton_,
-Captain Farquhar, was one of our largest war-ships at that time,
-and the flagship of Rear-Admiral Kimberley; the _Vandalia_, Captain
-Schoonmaker, was somewhat smaller, and the _Nipsic_, Commander Mullan,
-was still less in size. On March 15 a hurricane demolished the whole of
-this fleet, except one, and ten merchant vessels besides, and caused
-the loss of nearly one hundred and fifty lives. It is an extraordinary
-story, which has been fully related by Mr. John P. Dunning, from whose
-article in “St. Nicholas” for February, 1890, the accompanying facts
-and illustrations are drawn.
-
-[Illustration: THE “CALLIOPE” ESCAPING FROM APIA HARBOR.]
-
-  The harbor in which the disaster occurred is a small semicircular
-  bay, around the inner side of which lies the town of Apia. A coral
-  reef, visible at low water, extends in front of the harbor from the
-  eastern to the western extremity, a distance of nearly two miles.
-  A break in this reef, probably a quarter of a mile wide, forms a
-  gateway to the harbor. The space within the bay where ships can lie
-  at anchor is very small, as a shoal extends some distance out from
-  the eastern shore, and on the other side another coral reef runs well
-  out into the bay. The war-vessels were anchored in the deep water in
-  front of the American consulate. The _Eber_ and _Nipsic_ were nearest
-  the shore. There were ten or twelve sailing-vessels, principally
-  small schooners lying in the shallow water west of the men-of-war.
-  The storm was preceded by several weeks of bad weather, and on
-  Friday, March 15, the wind increased and there was every indication
-  of a hard blow. The war-ships made preparation for it by lowering
-  topmasts and making all the spars secure, and steam was also raised
-  to guard against the possibility of the anchors not holding.
-
-  The wind rose to a hurricane and was accompanied by heavy,
-  wind-driven rain, and when toward morning it became evident that
-  some smaller ships were already ashore, and that the war-ships were
-  dragging their anchors in spite of every effort, the whole town was
-  awake, and much of it down by the beach seeking what shelter it could
-  from the sleet-like blast. This night of horror gradually lightened
-  into dawn, when it was seen that all the war-ships had been swept
-  from their former moorings and were bearing down toward the inner
-  reef. The decks swarmed with men clinging to anything affording a
-  hold. The hulls of the ships were tossing about like corks, and the
-  decks were being deluged with water as every wave swept in from the
-  open ocean. Several sailing-vessels had gone ashore in the western
-  part of the bay. Those most plainly visible now were the _Eber_,
-  _Adler_, and _Nipsic_, very close together and only a few yards from
-  the reef.
-
-  The little gunboat _Eber_ was making a desperate struggle, but her
-  doom was certain. Suddenly she shot forward, the current bore her off
-  to the right, and her bow struck the port quarter of the _Nipsic_,
-  carrying away several feet of the _Nipsic’s_ rail and one boat. The
-  _Eber_ then fell back and fouled with the _Olga_, and after that she
-  swung around broadside to the wind, was lifted high on the crest of a
-  great wave and hurled with awful force upon the reef. In an instant
-  there was not a vestige of her to be seen. Every timber must have
-  been shattered, and half the poor creatures aboard of her crushed to
-  death before they felt the waters closing above their heads. Hundreds
-  of people were on the beach by this time, and the work of destruction
-  had occurred within full view of them all. They stood for a moment
-  appalled by the awful scene, and a cry of horror arose from the lips
-  of every man who had seen nearly a hundred of his fellow-creatures
-  perish in an instant. Then with one accord they all rushed to the
-  water’s edge nearest the point where the _Eber_ had foundered. The
-  natives ran into the surf far beyond the point where a white man
-  could have lived, and stood waiting to save any who might rise from
-  the water. There were six officers and seventy men on the _Eber_ when
-  she struck the reef, and of these five officers and sixty-six men
-  were lost. This was about six o’clock in the morning.
-
-  [Illustration: “THE SAMOANS STOOD BATTLING AGAINST THE SURF, RISKING
-  THEIR LIVES TO SAVE THE AMERICAN SAILORS.”]
-
-  During the excitement attending that calamity the other vessels
-  had been for the time forgotten, but it was soon noticed that the
-  positions of several of them had become more alarming. The _Adler_
-  had been swept across the bay, close to the reef, and in half an hour
-  she was lifted on top of the reef and turned completely over on her
-  side. Nearly every man was thrown into the water, but as almost the
-  entire hull was exposed, all but twenty succeeded in regaining her
-  deck, and the remainder were rescued toward the close of the day when
-  almost exhausted.
-
-  Just after the _Adler_ struck, the attention of every one was
-  directed toward the _Nipsic_. She was standing off the reef with her
-  head to the wind, but the three anchors which she had out at the time
-  were not holding; and orders were given to attach a hawser to a heavy
-  eight-inch rifle on the forecastle and throw the gun overboard. As
-  the men were in the act of doing this, the _Olga_ bore down on the
-  _Nipsic_ and struck her amidships with awful force. Her bowsprit
-  passed over the side of the _Nipsic_, and, after carrying away one
-  boat and splintering the rail, came in contact with the smokestack,
-  which was struck fairly in the center and fell to the deck with a
-  crash like thunder. For a moment it was difficult to realize what had
-  happened, and great confusion followed. The iron smokestack rolled
-  from side to side with every movement of the vessel, until finally
-  heavy blocks were placed under it. By that time the _Nipsic_ had
-  swung around and was approaching the reef, and it seemed certain that
-  she would go down in the same way as had the _Eber_. Captain Mullan
-  saw that any further attempt to save the vessel would be useless,
-  so he gave the orders to beach her. She had a straight course of
-  about two hundred yards to the sandy beach in front of the American
-  consulate, where she stuck and stood firm.
-
-  Two attempts to lower boats were failures and every man crowded to
-  the forecastle. A line was thrown, double hawsers were soon made fast
-  from the vessel to the shore, and the natives and others gathered
-  around the lines, where the voices of officers shouting to the men on
-  deck were mingled with the loud cries and singing of the Samoans. One
-  by one, and in a very orderly manner, the men of the _Nipsic_ came
-  down the hawsers toward the shore, but many would never have reached
-  it, had it not been for the assistance of the Samoans, who, at the
-  peril of their lives, stood in the boiling torrent, grasping those
-  whose hold was broken from the rope.
-
-  Meanwhile, the four large men-of-war, _Trenton_, _Calliope_,
-  _Vandalia_, and _Olga_, were still afloat and in a comparatively
-  safe position; but about ten o’clock the _Trenton_ was seen to be
-  in a helpless condition; her rudder and propeller were both gone,
-  and there was nothing but her anchors to hold her up against the
-  unabated force of the storm. The _Vandalia_ and _Calliope_ were also
-  in danger, drifting back toward the reef near the point where lay the
-  wreck of the _Adler_; and they came closer together every minute,
-  until finally the English ship struck the _Vandalia_ and tore a great
-  hole in her bow. Then Captain Kane of the _Calliope_ determined to
-  try to steam out of the harbor as his only hope, and he at once cut
-  loose from all his anchors. The _Calliope’s_ head swung around to the
-  wind and her engines were worked to their utmost power. Great waves
-  broke over her bow and she gained headway at first only inch by inch,
-  but her speed gradually increased until it became evident that she
-  could leave the harbor. This manœuver of the British ship is regarded
-  as one of the most daring in naval annals—the one desperate chance
-  offered her commander to save his vessel and the three hundred lives
-  aboard.
-
-  The _Trenton’s_ fires had gone out by that time, and she lay helpless
-  almost in the path of the _Calliope_. The decks were swarming with
-  men, but, facing death as they were, they recognized the heroic
-  struggle of the British ship, and a great shout went up from aboard
-  the _Trenton_. “Three cheers for the _Calliope_!” was the sound that
-  reached the ears of the British tars as they passed out of the harbor
-  in the teeth of the storm; and the heart of every Englishman went out
-  to the brave American sailors who gave that parting tribute to the
-  Queen’s ship.
-
-  When the excitement on the _Vandalia_ which followed the collision
-  with the _Calliope_ had subsided, it was determined to beach the
-  vessel, and straining every means at hand to avoid the dreaded reef,
-  she moved slowly across the harbor until her bow stuck in the sand,
-  about two hundred yards off shore and probably eighty yards from the
-  stem of the _Nipsic_. Her engines were stopped and the men in the
-  engine-room and fire-room below were ordered on deck. The ship swung
-  around broadside to the shore, and it was thought at first that her
-  position was comparatively safe, as it was believed that the storm
-  would abate in a few hours, and the two hundred and forty men on
-  board could be rescued then; but the wind seemed to increase in fury,
-  and as the hull of the steamer sank lower the force of the waves grew
-  more violent, yet no one on shore was able to render the least aid.
-
-  These terrible scenes had detracted attention from the other two
-  men-of-war still afloat; but about four o’clock in the afternoon
-  the positions of the _Trenton_ and _Olga_ became most alarming. The
-  flagship had been in a helpless condition for hours, being without
-  rudder or propeller, while volumes of water poured in through her
-  hawser-pipes. Men never fought against adverse circumstances with
-  more desperation than the officers and men of the _Trenton_ displayed
-  during those hours, yet the vessel was slowly forced over toward
-  the eastern reef. Destruction seemed imminent, as the great vessel
-  was pitching heavily, and her stern was but a few feet from the
-  reef. This point was a quarter of a mile from shore, and if the
-  _Trenton_ had struck the reef there, it is probable that not a life
-  would have been saved. A skilful manœuver, suggested by Lieutenant
-  Brown, saved the ship from destruction. Every man was ordered into
-  the port rigging, and the compact mass of bodies was used as a sail.
-  The wind struck against the men in the rigging and forced the vessel
-  out into the bay again. She soon commenced to drift back against the
-  _Olga_, which was still standing off the reef and holding up against
-  the storm more successfully than any other vessel in the harbor
-  had done, and in spite of every effort on the part of both ships a
-  collision took place which severely damaged both. Fortunately, the
-  vessels drifted apart, whereupon the _Olga_ steamed ahead toward the
-  mud-flats in the eastern part of the bay, and was soon hard and fast
-  on the bottom. Not a life was lost, and several weeks later the ship
-  was hauled off and saved.
-
-  The _Trenton_ was now about two hundred feet from the sunken
-  _Vandalia_, and seemed sure to strike her and throw into the water
-  the men still clinging to the rigging. It was now after five o’clock,
-  and the daylight was beginning to fade away. In a half hour more, the
-  _Trenton_ had drifted to within a few yards of the _Vandalia’s_ bow,
-  and feelings hard to describe came to the hundreds who watched the
-  vessels from the shore.
-
-  Presently the last faint rays of daylight faded away, and night came
-  down upon the awful scene. The storm was still raging with as much
-  fury as at any time during the day. The poor creatures who had been
-  clinging for hours to the rigging of the _Vandalia_ were bruised
-  and bleeding; but they held on with the desperation of men who were
-  hanging between life and death. The ropes had cut the flesh on
-  their arms and legs, and their eyes were blinded by the salt spray
-  which swept over them. Weak and exhausted as they were, they would
-  be unable to stand the terrible strain much longer. The final hour
-  seemed to be upon them. The great, black hull of the _Trenton_ was
-  almost ready to crash into the stranded _Vandalia_ and grind her
-  to atoms. Suddenly a shout was borne across the waters. The sound
-  of four hundred and fifty voices was heard above the roar of the
-  tempest. “Three cheers for the _Vandalia_!” was the cry that warmed
-  the hearts of the dying men in the rigging.
-
-  The shout died away upon the storm, and there arose from the
-  quivering masts of the sunken ship a response so feeble it was
-  scarcely heard upon the shore. Every heart was melted to pity. “God
-  help them!” was passed from one man to another. The cheer had hardly
-  ceased when the sound of music came across the water. The _Trenton’s_
-  band was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The thousand men on sea
-  and shore had never before heard strains of music at such a time as
-  that. An indescribable feeling came over the Americans on the beach
-  who listened to the notes of the national song mingled with the
-  howling of the storm.
-
-  But the collision of the _Trenton_ and _Vandalia_, instead of
-  crushing the latter vessel to pieces, proved to be the salvation of
-  the men in the rigging. When the _Trenton’s_ stern finally struck
-  the side of the _Vandalia_, there was no shock, and she swung around
-  broadside to the sunken ship. This enabled the men on the _Vandalia_
-  to escape to the deck of the _Trenton_, and in a short time they were
-  all taken off.
-
-  The storm had abated at midnight, and when day dawned there was no
-  further cause for alarm. The men were removed from the _Trenton_ and
-  provided with quarters on shore.
-
-  During the next few days the evidences of the great disaster could be
-  seen on every side. In the harbor were the wrecks of four men-of-war:
-  the _Trenton_, _Vandalia_, _Adler_, and _Eber_; and two others, the
-  _Nipsic_ and _Olga_, were hard and fast on the beach and were hauled
-  off with great difficulty. The wrecks of ten sailing-vessels also lay
-  upon the reefs. On shore, houses and trees were blown down, and the
-  beach was strewn with wreckage from one end of the town to the other.
-
-Ever since men began to go to sea lights have been placed on shore to
-guide them to a landing-place; but in early times these were nothing
-more than fires on headlands, kindled, perhaps, by the wives and
-children of the captain and his crew of neighbors, when these mariners
-were expected home. These friendly services became a little more
-systematic when merchants began to risk their property on the water;
-and on the shores of the Mediterranean, which we have found to be the
-cradle of civilized navigation and trade, harbor-beacons were erected
-in very early times as guides to a safe anchorage.
-
-  The giant statue known as the Colossus, at Rhodes, is supposed to
-  have been used as a beacon and lighthouse, a fire burning in the
-  palm of its uplifted colossal hand at night. Although the account of
-  the Colossus is only a matter of guesswork, it is historically true
-  that in those ages of ignorant heedlessness of the need of beacons,
-  a lighthouse was built so grand in proportions, so enduring in
-  character, that it became known as one of the Seven Wonders of the
-  World, and outlived all the others, save the Pyramids, by centuries,
-  and in some ways has never been excelled by any similar structure
-  in modern times, unless it be by our mammoth marble monument to
-  Washington. This was the lighthouse built on the little island of
-  Pharos by Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, two hundred and eighty
-  years before Christ, to guide vessels into the harbor of Alexandria.
-  From all descriptions, it must have closely resembled our Washington
-  monument; for it was built of white stone, was square at the base,
-  and tapered toward the apex. Open windows were near its top, through
-  which the fire within could be seen for thirty miles by vessels at
-  sea.
-
-The destruction of these beacons in the general smash and ruin that
-seem to have overtaken the world when the Roman empire went to pieces
-is only indicative of the way the darkness of barbarism returned and
-enveloped the minds as well as the works of men, until light broke
-through the clouds again with the rise of organized sea-powers in
-Western Europe. Then beacons were gradually rebuilt, but in almost all
-cases by private hands—the feudal lords of coast estates, the master
-or authorities of sea-ports, the monks in monasteries near dangerous
-landings, and now and then the king at his principal port, setting up
-marks for steering by day and lighting fires on dark nights. Most of
-the latter were hardly more than tar-barrels, which would burn brightly
-in a gale, and the better class were towers of stonework, on top of
-which a mass of coal was ignited in an iron cage, and kept stirred into
-brightness by a watcher.
-
-It was an easy matter to imitate such beacons, and wreckers would
-often set up false lights. Many a fearful tradition has come down of
-the doings of wreckers, not only in England and Spain, but in America
-and in the East. One of their tricks, when they saw a ship approaching
-in the evening, was to hang a lantern upon a horse’s neck, and let
-him graze, well-hobbled, along the beach. This would appear like the
-rocking of a lantern on a vessel at rest—what is called a riding or
-anchor light; and, deceived by this promise of a safe anchorage, the
-stranger would not discover that he had been cheated until his keel
-struck a reef or sandbar, and the pirates had begun their villainous
-attack. It is said to have been a device of this kind which caused
-the wreck in 1812, on the Carolina coast,—whose islands and lagoons
-are reputed to have been infested by such ruffians, there known as
-“bankers,”—of a vessel carrying the beautiful Theodosia Burr, daughter
-of Aaron Burr, and wife of Governor Alston of South Carolina. Her death
-at the hands of these men is illustrated on page 172.
-
-During the reign of Henry VIII of England, an association of mariners
-called, in short, the Guild of the Trinity was chartered and given
-various powers and privileges in connection with the newly instituted
-royal navy and dockyards. It encouraged coast-lights, and in 1573 Queen
-Elizabeth formally placed authority to erect and govern lighthouses and
-coast beacons in the hands of this corporation, and there it remains
-to this day; for its headquarters, Trinity House, on Tower Hill, in
-London, are a recognized office of the British government, answering to
-our Lighthouse Board.
-
-It was not long before it encouraged the founding of a permanent light
-on Eddystone Shoals, a group of reefs near Plymouth, exceedingly
-dangerous because they lie precisely in the track of ships bound
-up or down the English Channel, yet almost invisible. Upon the
-mere standing-room afforded by the crest of this rock, Sir William
-Winstanley managed to erect, two hundred years ago, a tower of wood
-and iron trestle-work, bolted to its foundation and carrying a glass
-room or lantern containing a coal-grate, eighty feet above low-water
-mark. This was completed in 1698. One winter’s experience convinced
-him that it needed strengthening, and in 1699 a case of masonry was
-built about the tower, and made solid to the height of twenty feet,
-while the whole structure was increased to the height of one hundred
-and twenty feet. Then, it is related, Winstanley boasted that the sea
-had not strength enough to tear it down, and all England rejoiced in
-so noble a beacon; but we now know that the construction was faulty,
-in its large diameter, polygonal outline, excess of ornament, and
-lack of weight. While Sir William was within it making repairs, four
-years later, the memorable hurricane of November 20, 1703, swept the
-coast, and left scarcely a trace of the tower. Its value had been
-proved, however, and it was replaced, in 1706, by a straight-sided
-tower of oaken timbers, weighted in their lower courses by stone. This
-was designed by an engineer named Rudyerd, and lasted until burned
-down in 1755; and engineers say it was better for its place than was
-the round, solid-based stone tower of Smeaton that followed it, and
-became so celebrated. This was finished in three years, and in 1760 was
-lighted, not by a fire, as of old, but by candles—the first use of such
-an illuminant. This truly illustrious lighthouse remained until a few
-years ago, when it became so racked by the assaults of the sea as to
-be unsafe. It was then replaced by the one that stands there to-day,
-rivaling its magnificent neighbor on the Biscay shore opposite, the
-lighthouse of Carduan, which was built to support a bonfire of oak, but
-has remained to be lighted successively by oil-lamps, by gas-burners,
-and finally by electricity.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  ENGRAVED BY R. C. COLLINS.
-
-THE WRECK OF THE FIRST MINOT’S LEDGE LIGHTHOUSE.]
-
-A somewhat similar history belongs to some of the lighthouses on this
-side of the Atlantic. The first one regularly set up in the United
-States was that on the north side of the entrance to Boston harbor,
-erected in 1716; but many others go back to Colonial days—that on
-Sandy Hook, for instance. Perhaps the most interesting history is
-attached to the light on Minot’s Ledge, in Boston harbor. This is a
-dangerous reef, concealed at high water and so exposed that the problem
-of lighting it was much the same as that presented at Eddystone, Bell
-Rock, Dhu Heartach, and other well known islets on the British coast.
-
-The first lighthouse on Minot’s Ledge was built in 1848, and was an
-octagonal tower resting on the tops of eight wrought-iron piles sixty
-feet high, eight inches in diameter, and sunk five feet into the rock.
-
-  These piles were braced together in many ways, and, as they offered
-  less surface to the waves than a solid structure, the lighthouse was
-  considered by all authorities upon the subject to be exceptionally
-  strong. Its great test came in April, 1851. On the fourteenth of that
-  month, two keepers being in the lighthouse, an easterly gale set in,
-  steadily increasing in force.... On Wednesday, the sixteenth, the
-  gale had become a hurricane; and when at times the tower could be
-  seen through the mists and sea-drift, it seemed to bend to the shock
-  of the waves. At four o’clock that afternoon an ominous proof of the
-  fury of the waves on Minot’s Ledge reached the shore—a platform which
-  had been built between the piles only seven feet below the floor of
-  the keeper’s room. The raging seas, then, were leaping fifty feet in
-  the air. Would they reach ten feet higher?—for if so, the house and
-  the keepers were doomed. Nevertheless, when darkness set in the light
-  shone out as brilliantly as ever, but the gale seemed, if possible,
-  then to increase. What agony those two men must have suffered! How
-  that dreadful abode must have swayed in the irresistible hurricane,
-  and trembled at each crashing sea! The poor unfortunates must have
-  known that if those seas, leaping always higher and higher, ever
-  reached their house, it would be flung down into the ocean, and they
-  would be buried with it beneath the waves.
-
-  [Illustration: A SCREW-PILE OCEAN LIGHTHOUSE.]
-
-  To those hopeless, terrified watchers the entombing sea came at last.
-  At one o’clock in the morning the lighthouse bell was heard by those
-  on shore to give a mournful clang, and the light was extinguished. It
-  was the funeral knell of two patient heroes.
-
-  Next day there remained on the rock only eight jagged iron stumps.
-
-Thus, everywhere, and in all latitudes, the beacons and wooden towers
-and huge pyramids of long ago have given place to slender spires of
-solid masonry, holding powerful signals perhaps hundreds of feet above
-the waves, and visible as far as the curve of the earth’s surface
-will permit. Yet in place of the sturdy bonfire of oak, or the huge
-iron cage full of coals, there is only a single lamp, whose rays are
-gathered by deep reflectors into a compact bundle of unwasted rays, and
-doubled and redoubled by rows of magnifying lenses until they can dart
-to the furthest horizon in a strong beam of steady light. No longer
-does the mariner trust to his wife to kindle the tar-barrel to guide
-him home. He knows that nowhere is his government more watchful of
-its subjects than in its lighthouse service, and that he may trust to
-having that bright signal to welcome him in the darkness, as well as he
-can trust his own eyes to see it. The United States alone expends over
-$2,500,000 annually in looking after her lighthouses, lightships, and
-buoys.
-
-[Illustration: THE LIGHTHOUSE AT ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA.]
-
-Indeed, these beacons have become so thickly planted that it has been
-found necessary to distinguish between them in order to avoid mistaking
-one for another. At first this was done by doubling, as in the case of
-New York’s “Highland Lights,” or the twin lights of Thatcher’s Island
-off Cape Ann, or even trebling them as at Nauset, on Cape Cod, but
-now the display is made to vary. Thus some of them are simply fixed
-white lights; some are white and revolve—the whole lantern on the
-summit of the tower being turned on wheels by machinery, and the flame
-disappears for a longer or shorter time; while others are white “flash”
-lights, glancing only for an instant, and then lost for a few seconds,
-or giving a long wink and then a short one with a space of darkness
-between. Some lighthouses show a steady red light; others, alternate
-red and white. By these colors and varying periods of appearance and
-disappearance (noted on charts, and published by the government in a
-general seaman’s guide called the “Coast Pilot”), navigators know which
-light they are looking at when several are in sight. For daylight
-recognition the towers may be painted half black and half white, or in
-stripes or bands or spirals, like the big barber’s pole in front of St.
-Augustine, Florida.
-
-It is impossible here to describe in detail the beautiful machinery
-by which the rays from the large but simple argand kerosene lamp are
-condensed into a single beam and projected through the Fresnel system
-of condensers and lenses, and by which the revolution and “flashing”
-are effected. Petroleum has superseded all other oils for general use,
-but electricity is now being extensively employed in the illumination
-of coast lights, especially in France, where they are introducing new
-principles, such as producing lightning-like flashes with a certain
-recognized regularity, and waving stupendous search-light beams in
-the sky, so that the approach to the coast may be seen when the land
-and lighthouse themselves are still below the horizon. If you have an
-opportunity to go into the lantern of a lighthouse, by all means take
-advantage of it; and if you can be there when a storm is raging, or
-when, on some misty night, the lantern is besieged by migrating birds,
-you will never forget the scene.
-
-On some especially dangerous—because hidden—shoals, reefs, or bars,
-like those off Nantucket or the extreme point of Sandy Hook, it may be
-out of the question or bad policy to erect a lighthouse. Here its place
-is taken by anchoring a stout vessel, built to withstand the severest
-weather, and arranged to carry lanterns at its mastheads.
-
-These are called “lightships,” and they are manned by a crew of keepers
-who have a very monotonous and uncomfortable time of it; yet in some
-cases men have spent twenty years or more in the service.
-
-The most desolate and dangerous lightship station is that of No. 1,
-Nantucket. “Upon this tossing island, out of sight of land, exposed
-to the fury of every tempest, and without a message from home during
-all the stormy months of winter, and sometimes even longer, ten
-men, braving the perils of wind and wave, and the worse terrors of
-isolation, trim the lamps whose light warns thousands of vessels from
-certain destruction, and hold themselves ready to save life when the
-warning is vain.”
-
-Seven years ago Mr. Gustav Kobbé, and the artist, William Taber, spent
-several days on the lightship and gave a graphic account of the life
-there, which I wish I were able to quote in full.
-
-The anchorage is twenty-four miles out at sea beyond Sankaty head,
-at the extremity of the shoals and rips which make all that space of
-water beyond the visible coast of Nantucket fatal to ships, hundreds of
-which are known to have been beaten to pieces on its treacherous bars.
-She is moored to a 6500-pound mushroom anchor by a chain two inches in
-thickness, yet she has been torn adrift twenty-three times, and has
-wandered widely before returning or being overtaken.
-
-“No. 1, Nantucket New South Shoals,” to quote Mr. Kobbé,
-
-  is a schooner of two hundred and seventy-five tons, one hundred and
-  three feet long, with twenty-four feet breadth of beam, and stanchly
-  built of white and live oak. She has two hulls, the space between
-  them being filled through holes at short intervals in the inner side
-  of the bulwarks with salt.... She has fore-and-aft lantern-masts
-  seventy-one feet high, including topmasts, and directly behind each
-  of the lantern masts a mast for sails forty-two feet high. Forty-four
-  feet up the lantern-masts are day-marks, reddish brown hoop-iron
-  gratings, which enable other vessels to sight the lightship more
-  readily. The lanterns are octagons of glass in copper frames five
-  feet in diameter, four feet nine inches high, with the masts as
-  centers. Each pane of glass is two feet long and two feet three
-  inches high. There are eight lamps, burning a fixed white light, with
-  parabolic reflectors in each lantern, which weighs, all told, about
-  a ton. Some nine hundred gallons of oil are taken aboard for service
-  during the year. The lanterns are lowered into houses built around
-  the masts. The house around the main lantern-mast stands directly
-  on the deck, while the foremast lantern-house is a heavily-timbered
-  frame three feet high. This is to prevent its being washed away by
-  the waves the vessel ships when she plunges into the wintry seas.
-  When the lamps have been lighted and the roofs of the lantern-houses
-  opened,—they work on hinges, and are raised by tackle,—the lanterns
-  are hoisted by means of winches to a point about twenty-five feet
-  from the deck. Were they to be hoisted higher they would make the
-  ship top-heavy.
-
-  [Illustration: LIGHTSHIP NO. 1, NANTUCKET NEW SOUTH SHOALS.]
-
-  A conspicuous object forward is the large fog-bell swung ten feet
-  above the deck. The prevalence of fog makes life on the South Shoal
-  Lightship especially dreary. During one season fifty-five days out of
-  seventy were thick, and for twelve consecutive days and nights the
-  bell was kept tolling at two-minute intervals.
-
-The actual work to be done is small, the daily cleaning of the lamps
-requiring only two or three hours, and other chores being very light,
-and the men nearly die of loneliness and “nothing to do.” It is
-pathetic to read how intense and friendly an interest they take in a
-single red buoy anchored near them; and they admit that fog is dreaded
-more because it hides this neighbor than for any other reason.
-
-Mr. Kobbé tells us that the emotional stress under which this crew
-labors can hardly be realized by any one who has not been through a
-similar experience.
-
-  The sailor on an ordinary ship has at least the inspiration of
-  knowing that he is bound for somewhere; that in due time his vessel
-  will be laid on her homeward course; that storm and fog are but
-  incidents of the voyage: he is on a ship that leaps forward full of
-  life and energy with every lash of the tempest. But no matter how
-  the lightship may plunge and roll, no matter how strong the favoring
-  gales may be, she is still anchored two miles southeast of the New
-  South Shoal.
-
-  [Illustration: CLEANING THE LAMPS ON A LIGHTSHIP.]
-
-  Besides enduring the hardships incidental to their duties aboard the
-  lightship, the South Shoal crew have done noble work in saving life.
-  While the care of the lightship is considered of such importance to
-  shipping that the crew are instructed not to expose themselves to
-  dangers outside their special line of duty, and they would therefore
-  have the fullest excuse for not risking their lives in rescuing
-  others, they have never hesitated to do so. When, a few winters ago,
-  the _City of Newcastle_ went ashore on one of the shoals near the
-  lightship, and strained herself so badly that although she floated
-  off, she soon filled and went down stern foremost, all hands,
-  twenty-seven in number, were saved by the South Shoal crew and kept
-  aboard of her over two weeks, until the story of the wreck was
-  signaled to some passing vessel and the lighthouse tender took them
-  off. This is the largest number saved at one time by the South Shoal,
-  but the lightship crew have faced great danger on several other
-  occasions.
-
-This is, perhaps, the extreme picture of lightship life, but apart
-from the prolonged isolation and continuous roughness of the water,
-the experiences of the men off Sandy Hook and elsewhere are not
-greatly removed from it, and no philanthropy is more worthy of support
-than that which seeks to mitigate the loneliness of these exiles by
-providing them with reading matter. The Lighthouse Board provides a
-small circulating library for these ships, and contributions of books
-and files of illustrated periodicals will be gratefully received and
-put to good use by the Superintendent of the Lighthouse Service in
-Washington.
-
-[Illustration: THE FOG-BELL.]
-
-But there are times—and they occur very frequently in northern
-waters—when fogs which no light can penetrate envelop sea and coast,
-and that is the most dangerous of all times to an approaching ship.
-The only means by which a warning can be given, in such an emergency,
-is by sound. In many places bells are rung, but often the place to be
-avoided is so situated that the roar of the surf would drown a bell’s
-note, and then fog-horns are blown. These fog-horns are of a size so
-immense, and voices so stentorian, that it requires a steam engine to
-blow them, and they utter a booming, hollow blast, a dismal note as we
-hear it when we are safe on the land, but sweet to the anxious captain
-whose vessel is laboring through the gloom under close-reefed topsails,
-and uncertain of her exact position. One kind of these horns is very
-complicated in its structure, and screeches in a rough, broken blare,
-a note far-reaching beyond any smooth, whistling sound that could be
-made. This shriek is so hideous, so ear-splitting, when heard near at
-hand, that no name bad enough to express it could be found; so its
-inventors went to the other extreme, and called it a siren, after those
-most enchanting of sweet singers who tried to entice Ulysses out of his
-course. This name is opposite in a double sense, indeed, for the sirens
-of old lured sailors to wreck, while our siren hoarsely bids them keep
-off. Finally, buoys, which at first were simply tight casks, but now
-are usually made of boiler-iron, are anchored on small reefs, to which
-are hung bells, rung constantly by the tossing of their support; and on
-other reefs buoys are fixed having a hollow cap so arranged that when a
-big wave rushes over, it shuts in a body of air, under great and sudden
-pressure, which can only escape through a whistle in the top of the
-cap, uttering a long warning wail to tell its position.
-
-It is in such times as this that the pilot comes out strong.
-
-A pilot is a man who has made himself thoroughly acquainted with
-certain waters where navigation is dangerous, and who is licensed
-by some proper authority, after training and examination, to direct
-vessels in safety in entering harbors or passing through other
-intricate places. A ship-captain may be an excellent navigator, but
-he is not expected to know every rock and sandbar crouching under the
-waves, and all the twistings and turnings of the entrance and channel
-of a foreign harbor, especially as these channels are subject to
-constant change. In this country, indeed, although coasting-vessels may
-refuse a pilot, the law will not permit captains coming from or bound
-to a foreign port to do so; and if any accident happens when no pilot
-is aboard the insurance money will not be paid, and the ship’s officers
-may be punished.
-
-[Illustration: A SIREN RIGGED UPON A MERCHANT STEAMSHIP.]
-
-Pilots, then, are important men and are able to charge very high prices
-for their services (generally rated according to the draft of the
-vessel), and their profession is so organized and guarded that not only
-must a man be thoroughly competent, but he must wait for a vacancy in
-the regular number before he will be admitted to their ranks.
-
-Their method of work is very exciting. A dozen or so together will
-form the crew of a trim, stanch schooner, provisioned for a fortnight
-or more, which can outsail anything but a racing yacht, and is built
-to ride safely through the highest seas. A few steamers are coming
-into use, but the procedure is much the same. You will now and then
-see one of these beautiful little vessels sailing up the quiet harbor,
-threading its way through the black steamers and sputtering tug-boats
-and great ships, as a shy and graceful girl walks among the guests at a
-lawn party, and you know from its air as well as the big number on its
-white mainsail that it is a pilot boat, even if it does not carry the
-regular pilot-flag, which in the United States is simply the “union” or
-starry canton of the ensign.
-
-[Illustration: BURNING A “FLARE” ON A PILOT-BOAT.]
-
-But these fine schooners and the brave men they carry are rarely in
-port. Their time is spent far in the offing of the harbor, cruising
-back and forth in wait for incoming ships, and the New York pilots
-often go two and three hundred miles out to sea, and in storms may
-be blown much farther away. Other pilot-boats are waiting also, and
-the lookout at the reeling mast-head must keep the very keenest watch
-upon the horizon. Suddenly he catches sight of a white speck which
-his practised eye tells him is a ship’s top-sails, or of a blur upon
-the sky that advertises a steamer’s approach. The schooner’s head is
-instantly turned toward it, and all the canvas is crowded on that she
-will bear, for away off at the right a second pilot-boat, well down, is
-also seen to be aiming at the same point and trying hard to win.
-
-The first pilots of New York harbor were stationed at Sandy Hook, and
-visited incoming vessels in whale-boats; and many a stately British
-frigate or colonial trader was forced to wait anxiously outside the
-bar, rolling and tossing in the sea-way, or tacking hither and yon,
-hoping for a glimpse of that tiny speck where flashing oars told of
-the coming pilot. It is in this way, as the late Mr. J. O. Davidson,
-the artist, who knew all about such things, told us in “St. Nicholas”
-(January, 1890), that many vessels are still met, off some of our
-smaller harbors, and at the mouth of the Mississippi River. There the
-waters of the great river pouring into the Gulf of Mexico through the
-Port Eads Jetties make a turbulent swell with foam-crested billows that
-roll the stoutest ship’s gunwale under, even in calm weather; yet the
-little whale-boats, swift and buoyant, dash out bravely in a race for
-the sail on the distant horizon, for there are two pilot-stations at
-the Jetties, and it is “first come first engaged.”
-
-Sometimes, on the other hand, it is the ship that looks for the
-pilot, cruising about with the code-letters P T flying from her
-signal-halyards in token of her need. She may even run past a
-pilot-boat in the night and get into danger without being aware of it.
-To prevent this, says Mr. Davidson, the pilots burn what is known as a
-“flare” or torch, consisting of a bunch of cotton or lamp-wick dipped
-in turpentine, on the end of a short handle. It burns with a brilliant
-flame, lighting up the sea for a great distance and throwing the sails
-and number of the pilot-boat into strong relief against the darkness.
-On a dark clear night, the reddish glare which the signal projects on
-the clouds looks like distant heat lightning.
-
-Having sighted his vessel, the pilot whose turn it is to go on duty
-hurries below and packs the valise which contains such things as he
-wishes to take home, for this is his method of going ashore; and when
-he has departed, if he is the last one of the pilot-crew, the little
-vessel returns herself to port in charge of the sailing-master, cook,
-and “boy,” to refit and take on a new set of men.
-
-The storm may be howling in the full force of the winter’s fury, and
-the waves running “mountain-high,” but the pilot must get aboard by
-some means. It is rough weather indeed when his mates cannot launch
-their yawl and row him to where he can climb up the stranger’s side
-with the aid of a friendly rope’s end.
-
-[Illustration: A PILOT BOARDING A STEAMER.]
-
-Yet frequently this is out of the question. Then a “whip” is rigged
-beyond the end of a lee yard-arm, carrying a rope rove through a
-snatch-block, and having a noose at its end. The steamer slows her
-engines, or the ship heaves to, and the pilot-schooner, under perfect
-control, runs up under the lee of the big ship, as near as she dares
-in the gale. Then, just at the right instant, a man on the ship’s
-yard hurls the rope, it is caught by the schooner, the pilot slips one
-leg through the bowline-noose, and a second afterward the schooner has
-swept on and he is being hoisted up to the yard-arm, but generally
-not in time to save himself a good ducking in the coaming of some big
-roller. Going on shipboard in this fashion is not favorable to an
-imposing effect; nevertheless, the pilot is welcomed by both crew and
-passengers, who admire his courage and trust his skill, but smile at
-the high hat beloved of all pilots.
-
-Now the pilot is master—stands ahead of the captain even—and his
-orders are absolute law. He inspects the vessel to form his opinion
-of how she will behave, and then goes to the wheel or stands where
-best he can give his orders to the steersman and to the men in the
-fore-chains heaving the sounding lead. He must never abandon his post,
-he must never lose his control of the ship, or make a mistake as to
-its position in respect to the lee-shore, or fail to be equal to every
-emergency. If it is too dark and foggy and stormy to see, he must feel;
-and if he cannot do this he must have the faculty of going right by
-intuition. To fail is to lose his reputation if not his life. This is
-what is expected of pilots, and this is what they actually do in a
-hundred cases, the full details of any one of which would make a long
-and thrilling tale of adventurous fighting for life.
-
-It is to help pilots and navigators of all sorts to avoid the perils
-that beset them that governments not only spend large sums in surveying
-coasts and harbors, publishing charts and descriptions, and maintaining
-lighthouses and lightships, but mark out bars and channels with
-floating guides, and their borders with shore-beacons and “ranges,” to
-form so many finger-posts for the right road. Were it not for these
-sign-posts no ship could safely enter any commercial harbor in the
-world; and it will be valuable to quote somewhat from an article, with
-capital illustrations, written for “St. Nicholas” (March, 1896) by an
-officer of the United States Navy, Lieut. John M. Ellicott, since it
-describes how the long, winding approaches to one of the greatest ports
-of the world are marked out by day and by night—I mean the harbor of
-New York.
-
-  Suppose, then, that we are on a big transatlantic steamer approaching
-  the United States from Europe.... Having secured his pilot, it is the
-  captain’s next aim to make a “land-fall”—that is to say, he wishes to
-  come in sight of some well-known object on shore, which, being marked
-  down on his chart, will show him just where he is and how he must
-  steer to find the entrance to the harbor.
-
-  A special lighthouse is usually the object sought, and in approaching
-  New York harbor it is customary for steamers from Europe to first
-  find, or sight, Fire Island Lighthouse. This is on a sandy island
-  near the coast of Long Island. When, therefore, the liner steams
-  in sight of Fire Island Light she hoists two signals, one of which
-  tells her name and the other the welfare of those on board. The
-  operator then telegraphs to the ship’s agents in New York that she
-  has been sighted, and that all on board are well or otherwise. [Other
-  despatches go to the newspapers, who have observing stations and
-  telegraph arrangements here and at Sandy Hook.]
-
-  [Illustration: DAY-MARKS IN NEW YORK HARBOR.]
-
-  The ship’s course is then laid to reach the most prominent object at
-  the harbor entrance, in this case Sandy Hook Lightship. She is easily
-  recognized. The course from this lightship to the harbor entrance
-  is laid down on the chart “west-northwest, one quarter west,” and,
-  steering this course, a group of three buoys is reached. One is
-  a large “nun,” or cone-shaped, buoy, painted black and white in
-  vertical stripes; another has a triangular framework built on it, and
-  in the top of this framework is a bell which tolls mournfully as the
-  buoy is rocked; while the third is surmounted by a big whistle....
-  These mark the point where ocean ends and harbor begins, and can be
-  found in fair weather or in fog by their color and shape, or noise.
-  They are the mid-channel buoys at the entrance to Gedney Channel, the
-  deep-water entrance to New York harbor. Here it may be noted that
-  mid-channel buoys in all harbors in the United States are painted
-  black and white in vertical stripes, and, being in mid-channel,
-  should be passed close to by all deep-draft vessels. At this point
-  the pilot takes charge.
-
-  Ahead the water seems now to be dotted in the most indiscriminate
-  manner with buoys and beacons, and on the shores around the harbor,
-  far and near, there seem to be almost a dozen lighthouses. If,
-  however, you watch the buoys as the pilot steers the ship between
-  them, you will soon see that all those passed on the right-hand side
-  are _red_, and all on the left are _black_. Where more than one
-  channel runs through the same harbor, the different channels are
-  marked by buoys of different shapes. Principal channels are marked by
-  “nun” buoys, secondary channels by “can” buoys, and minor channels by
-  “spar” buoys.
-
-  [Illustration: NUN BUOYS.]
-
-  [Illustration: CAN BUOYS.]
-
-  [Illustration: SPAR BUOYS.]
-
-  Gedney Channel is a short, dredged lane leading over the outer bar,
-  or barrier of sand, which lies between harbor and ocean. Its buoys
-  are lighted at night by electricity, through submarine cables, the
-  red ones with red lights, the black ones with white lights. Moreover,
-  a little lighthouse off to the left, known as Sandy Hook Beacon,
-  has in its lamp a red sector which throws a red beam just covering
-  Gedney Channel. Thus this channel can be passed through in safety by
-  night as well as by day. If it is night the pilot knows when he is
-  through it by the change of color in Sandy Hook Beacon light from
-  red to white. Then he looks away past that light to his left for
-  two fixed white lights on the New Jersey shore and hillside, known
-  as Point Comfort Beacon and Waackaack Beacon, for he knows that by
-  keeping them in range, that is to say, in line with one another and
-  himself, and by steering toward them he is in the main ship channel.
-  By day the main ship channel buoys would guide him, as in Gedney
-  Channel, but at night these buoys are not lighted.
-
-  Only a short distance is now traversed when the ship comes to a point
-  where two unseen channels meet. This is indicated by a buoy having
-  a tall spindle, or “perch,” surmounted by a latticed square. From
-  here, if she continues on her course, she will remain in the main
-  ship-channel, which, although deeper, is a more circuitous route into
-  port; so, if she does not draw too much water, she is turned somewhat
-  to the right, and, leaving the buoy with the perch and square on her
-  right, because it is red, she is steered between the buoys which mark
-  Swash Channel. If it were night this channel would be revealed by two
-  range-lights on the Staten Island shore and hillside, known as Elm
-  Tree Beacon and New Dorp Beacon, both being steady-burning, white
-  lights; but we are entering by daylight, and when half-way through
-  Swash Channel we notice a buoy painted red and black in horizontal
-  stripes. To this is given a wide berth by the pilot. It is an
-  “obstruction” buoy marking a shoal spot or a wreck.
-
-[Illustration: OBSTRUCTION BUOY.]
-
-Channel buoys are all numbered in sequence from the sea inward, the
-red ones with even, and the black ones with odd numbers, and the
-larger ones are anchored with “mushrooms” while the smaller have
-“sinkers” of iron or stone. They are made of iron plates in water-tight
-compartments, so that if punctured by an over-running ship or some
-other accident, they will not be likely to sink. In harbors where ice
-forms in winter, large summer buoys are replaced in winter by a smaller
-sort less liable to be torn adrift. Buoys do go adrift, however, now
-and then, and sometimes take a voyage across the ocean or far down
-the coast before they can be found by the tenders of the Lighthouse
-Service, which is constantly looking after these and other marks.
-Lieutenant Ellicott tells us that all changes in the position of buoys
-or lightships, or the placing of new buoys to mark a change of channel,
-or an obstruction, are published promptly in pamphlets called “Notices
-to Mariners,” which are distributed as quickly as possible through well
-organized means of communication. A few years ago one of the largest of
-our handsome new cruisers was approaching New York harbor from the West
-Indies in a light fog. Sandy Hook Lightship had been found, the usual
-course laid for Gedney Channel, and the ship was steaming onward at
-full speed, her captain, having been inspector of that very lighthouse
-district but a short time before, feeling that he knew his way into
-that port better than the most experienced pilot. Presently, however,
-he was startled by the alarming cry of _breakers ahead_! A large hotel
-also loomed up, and, as the ship was backed full speed astern, all
-hands realized that they had barely escaped running high and dry on
-Rockaway Beach. When the vessel got into port it was learned that Sandy
-Hook Lightship had been moved considerably from its old position, and
-that the notice of this change had failed to reach the captain of the
-cruiser before he sailed from the West Indies.
-
-[Illustration: A WHISTLING BUOY, OUT OF COMMISSION.]
-
-Shipwrecks still occur, however, in spite of lighthouses and sirens
-and buoys and coast-surveys; therefore we add to our precautions
-arrangements to help those cast away. Societies to save wrecked persons
-have existed, it is said, for many centuries in China, but in Europe
-they are hardly a hundred years old. The early humane societies, like
-that of Great Britain, placed life-boats and rescuing gear in certain
-shore towns, and organized crews, who promised to go out to the aid of
-any lost ship, and to take good care of the persons rescued.
-
-In America, however, our coasts are so extensive, and so much of the
-dangerous part of them is far away from villages, or even a farmhouse,
-that the government has been obliged to do whatever was necessary. Thus
-came about the Life Saving Service, which now has its stations close
-together along our whole sea-coast, and upon the great lakes, covering
-more than ten thousand miles in all.
-
-Each of these stations is a snug house on the beach, tenanted by a
-keeper and six men, all of whom are chosen for their skill in swimming,
-and in handling a boat in the surf—something every man who “follows the
-sea” cannot do successfully. Beaching a boat through surf is an art.
-
-[Illustration: PATROLMEN EXCHANGING THEIR CHECKS.]
-
-During all the season, from October till May, two men from each station
-are incessantly patrolling the beach at night, each walking until he
-meets the patrolman from the next station. No matter how foul the
-weather, these watchmen are out until daylight looking for disasters.
-The moment they discover a vessel ashore, or likely to become disabled,
-they summon their companions and hasten to launch their boat. These
-boats are of two kinds. On the lakes and on the steep Pacific coast
-is used the very heavy English life-boat, fitted with masts and sails
-if necessary, which a steam tug is required to tow to the scene of
-the wreck, unless it is close in shore. But upon our flat, sandy
-Atlantic beaches only a lighter kind of surf-boat, made of cedar,
-can be handled. This is built with air-cases at each end and under
-the thwarts, so that it cannot sink. The station men drag it on its
-low wagon to the scene of its use, unless horses are to be had, and
-when it is launched they sit at the six oars, each with his cork belt
-buckled around him, and his eye fixed on the steersman, who stands in
-the stern, ready to obey his slightest motion of command, for rowing
-through the angry waves that dash themselves on a storm-beaten beach
-is a matter requiring extraordinary skill and strength. Then, when the
-vessel is reached, comes another struggle to avoid being struck and
-crushed by the plunging ship, or the broken spars and rigging pounding
-about the hull. But skill and caution generally enable the crew to
-rescue the unfortunate castaways one by one, though frequently several
-trips must be made, in each one of which every surfman risks his life,
-and in many a sad case loses it; yet there is no lack of men for the
-service.
-
-[Illustration: SAVING A SAILOR BY MEANS OF THE BREECHES-BUOY.]
-
-It is a common occurrence, however, that the sea will run so high that
-no boat could possibly be launched. Then the only possibility of rescue
-for the crew is by means of a line which shall bridge the space between
-the ship and the land before the hull falls to pieces. We read in old
-tales of wrecks of how some brave seaman would tie a light line around
-his waist, and dare the dreadful waves, and the more dreadful undertow,
-to save his comrades. If he got safely upon the beach, he drew a hawser
-on shore and made it fast. Now we do not ask this; but with a small
-cannon made for the purpose, a strong cord attached to a cannon-ball is
-fired over the ship, even though it be several hundred yards distant.
-Seizing this line as it falls across their vessel, the imperiled
-sailors haul to themselves a larger line, called a “whip,” which they
-fasten in a tackle-block in such a way that a still heavier cable can
-be stretched between the wreck and the land and made fast.
-
-Then by means of a small side-line and pulleys a double canvas bag,
-shaped like a pair of knee-breeches, is sent back and forth between
-the ship and the shore, bringing a man each time, until all are
-saved. Should there be many persons on board, though, and great haste
-necessary, instead of the breeches-buoy a small covered metallic boat,
-called the life-car, is sent out, into which several persons may get
-at once. These varied means are so skilfully employed, that now hardly
-one in two hundred is lost of those whose lives are endangered on the
-American coasts.
-
-[Illustration: THE SELF-RIGHTING LIFE-BOAT.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI
-
-FISHING AND OTHER MARINE INDUSTRIES
-
-
-The grandest sea-chase is that after the whale—the most gigantic of
-mammals, the most extraordinary in appearance and habits, and the most
-valuable to man, for the capture of one may mean ten times as much
-reward as the ivory of an elephant or the rarest otter-skin would
-afford, and perhaps a hundred times as much, if ambergris be found
-within its body.
-
-Men have had the hardihood to chase these huge and often savage
-creatures in their own turbulent element, and with the most primitive
-weapons, ever since the art of navigation was acquired.
-
-The Japanese and other Asiatics of the western shore of the North
-Pacific have dared to go out in rowboats and attack the largest
-whales since the origin of their traditions, and they had a method of
-entangling these leviathans in nets, which must have produced exciting
-scenes, as the monster struggled amid the bloody turmoil of waters to
-free himself from the innumerable connected cords that embarrassed his
-movements, rather than subdued his strength, until his life ebbed away
-through a hundred wounds.
-
-[Illustration: AN OLD WHALER.]
-
-On the Alaskan coast, and southward as far as Oregon, the Indians, and
-especially those of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the coasts of the
-Strait of Juan de Fuca, were accustomed, hundreds, perhaps thousands
-of years ago, to go far away into the ocean in their dug-out canoes,
-searching for and spearing the whales with lances made of flint or
-bone, having detachable barbed heads. These were attached to shafts by
-rawhide lines, and to the shafts were attached buoys of large inflated
-bladders. When the animal was struck, the heavy pole would drive the
-lancehead through the skin and then fall off. The barbs would not only
-hold the instrument there, but cause it to work deeper and deeper, and
-the whale, darting away or diving, would be so impeded by dragging
-the poles and buoys after him, that he would soon return to receive
-other darts, and so, between loss of blood and exhaustion, would
-ultimately be killed. It is extremely interesting to read the stories,
-gathered by early travelers from the lips of the Indians,—old Haidas
-or Makahs are living yet who have taken part in such nerve-testing
-canoe-chases,—of their fights with this gigantic foe far from land, and
-their hair’s-breadth escapes; and it is not strange that many quaint
-ceremonies were devised to placate the waters and the power of the
-whale-god in advance, and to honor the sea-hunters when they returned.
-
-The Greenlanders and Eastern Eskimos do not seem to have been able
-in their small skin boats to conquer the largest sort of whales, but
-the smaller ones, such as the white whale, fell to their spears in a
-similar way; and they took great pains to secure any dead or stranded
-cetacean that came within their reach, the bones of which were as
-valuable to them, in the absence of wood, as were the flesh, oil, and
-sinews.
-
-The history of European whaling begins with the excursions of the
-Basques, who, as long ago at least as the tenth century, were
-accustomed to go out from their shore-towns in search of the southern
-right whale which frequents the Bay of Biscay and its offing. Doubtless
-their boats were small, half-decked, lugger-rigged “shyppes,” carrying
-ten to fifteen men, and looking much like many of the Channel fishermen
-of to-day. This “fishery” supplied all Europe during the Middle Ages
-with the whalebone and oil which were among the luxuries of the rich at
-that time; but by the time the sixteenth century had arrived, whales
-had become so scarce in the Eastern Atlantic—where now they are almost
-extinct—that this industry must have ceased had not the Cabots shown
-the way to Newfoundland, to whose shores the Basques at once extended
-their voyages with excellent results, for in those days whales were
-commonly seen all along the American shore of the North Atlantic. But
-this remote fishery would have been too precarious and costly to be
-of great consequence had it not been for the early efforts, related
-in Chapter V, to find a passage to the East north of the continents.
-The earliest of these failed, but they brought back reports that the
-edge of the frozen sea abounded in whales, and men rushed into this
-newly discovered field of wealth, as, centuries later, they abandoned
-everything in headlong haste to go to the gold-fields of California,
-Australia, South Africa or the Yukon Valley.
-
-The English did their best to monopolize the whale fishery at once, but
-the Dutch sent war-vessels, and in a fleet action almost at the edge of
-the ice in 1618 the Dutch conquered and opened the seas to all comers,
-while separate districts on the coast of Spitzbergen were assigned to
-each nationality. The English interest in the fishery declined, but the
-Dutch increased their attention to it, taking over one thousand whales
-each year. “About 1680,” we read, “they had two hundred and sixty
-vessels and fourteen thousand seamen employed. Their fishery continued
-to flourish on almost as extensive a scale until 1770, when it began
-to decline, and finally, owing to the war, came to an end before the
-end of the century.” The Germans were always associated with them, and
-continued to send a whaling fleet to Barentz Sea and the Jan Mayen
-waters until 1873. Meanwhile the Greenland whaling-grounds had begun to
-attract British whalemen, followed by the Danes in the early part of
-the last century; then this local industry fell off, but was revived
-about 1800, remained prosperous for many years, and is still the
-support of Peterhead and a few other Scotch ports.
-
-[Illustration: WHALERS TRYING OIL OUT OF BLUBBER.]
-
-The abundance of whales near the coast was one of the prime
-inducements held out to colonists by North America, where whales
-often appeared close to the shore, or in harbors, as occasionally they
-do yet. Here, at first, whale-fishing was pursued wholly in rowboats
-launched from the beach. Many shore towns owned whaleboats and gear,
-each with its trained crew, and some kept a regular lookout, day by
-day, whose duty it was promptly to announce the appearance of any whale
-in the offing. Such was the case at Southampton, Long Island, for many
-years, and even now, occasionally, the town-crew there rushes away
-through the breakers after some stray visitor amid the excitement of
-the whole neighborhood, but this happens only at intervals of several
-years.
-
-Before the end of the seventeenth century, however, the people of
-Nantucket Island were wont to cruise about the neighboring ocean for
-right whales, their voyage lasting six weeks or so as a rule, and
-now and then they would pick up a sperm whale. By the middle of the
-eighteenth century, however, sperm whaling was no longer profitable
-in the Northern Atlantic, while the Greenland grounds were overrun by
-European ships. American fishermen therefore turned their attention to
-the West, and for many years confined themselves mainly to catching the
-sperm whale, finding at first their best “grounds” in the south-middle
-Pacific. When the War of Independence came on, Nantucket was the
-leading whaling-port of the country, but all the New England towns
-were more or less engaged, and no less than three hundred and sixty
-vessels, large and small, were out. The Revolutionary War nearly
-destroyed the industry, and before it could well revive, the War of
-1812 again subjected the whaling-ships to capture by English privateers
-and men-of-war all over the world. After that, however, they spread
-all over the Southern seas, and between 1840 and 1850 more than seven
-hundred were flying the flag of the United States.
-
-The whaling vessels were large, stanch craft, usually bark-rigged,
-distinguished by their old-fashioned shape, weather-stained, smoky
-appearance, enormous boats swinging from end to end of the ship from
-lofty davits, and try-works forward. They kept longer than any one
-else many relics of rigging, custom, and language, belonging to the
-seamanship of earlier generations; and no sea-peril could daunt either
-the vessel or its crew. They would sail on voyages lasting two or
-three years, and sometimes would circumnavigate the globe and return
-without having touched at a port. As a rule, however, they would gain
-part of a cargo, and then go to some port, ship it to London or New
-York, and refit for a new voyage. The profits of a trip were thus very
-great sometimes, but other trips were attended only by expense and
-misfortune.
-
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY W. TABER.
-
-A RACE FOR A WHALE.]
-
-The capture of whales in those days had more danger if not more
-excitement than now, for the only method was by rowing after them,
-helped by the sails, in the 28-foot, double-ended rowboats made for the
-purpose (of which every vessel carried six or eight), and sinking into
-their vitals darts and lances until they died. They were then towed
-to the vessel’s side, held by tackle from the yard-arms in a suitable
-position, and cut up. The oil in early days was packed in casks, but
-later has been run into iron tanks built into the hold, after having
-been tried out of the blubber in the great caldrons set in brick on the
-forward deck, which gave a whaler so peculiar an appearance, at all
-times, and would lead any one to suppose her on fire while the process
-of trying-out was going on, and the great volumes of black smoke caused
-by the use of whale-fat and waste as fuel were drifting to leeward.
-
-One of the best accounts of a chase published is that by the late
-Temple Brown, of the United States Fish Commission, in an article in
-“The Century” for February, 1893, from which I am permitted to make an
-extract:
-
-  While cruising on the coast of New Zealand, one day about 11.30
-  A. M., the lookout at the main hailed the deck with: “Thar sh’
-  b-l-o-w-s! Thar sh’ b-l-o-w-s! Blows! B-l-o-w-s!”
-
-  “Where away?” promptly responded the officer of the deck.
-
-  “Four points off the lee bow! Blows sperm-whales! Blows! Blows!” came
-  from aloft.
-
-  “How far off?” shouted the captain, roused out of his cabin by the
-  alarm, as his head and shoulders appeared above deck. “Where are they
-  heading?” he continued, as he went up the rigging on all-fours.
-
-  “Blows about two miles and a half off, sir,” replied Mr. Braxton,
-  the mate, looking off the lee-bow with his glasses, “and coming to
-  windward, I believe.”
-
-  “Call all hands!” said the captain. “Haul up the mainsail, and back
-  your main-yards. Hurry up there! Get your boats ready, Mr. Braxton!”
-
-  At the first alarm the men came swarming up the companionway of the
-  forecastle, divesting themselves of superfluous articles of clothing,
-  and scattering them indiscriminately about the deck. Rolling up
-  their trousers, and girding their loins with their leather belts,
-  taking a double reef until supper-time, they flitted nervously
-  here and there in their bare legs and feet, observing every order
-  with the greatest alacrity, and holding themselves in readiness to
-  go over the side of the vessel at the word of command. There is
-  a certain order, systematic action, or red tape, observed on all
-  first-class whaling-vessels, however imperfectly disciplined some of
-  the boat-crews may be. The captain indicates the boats he wishes to
-  attack the whales; the boat-header (an officer) and the boat-steerer
-  (the harpooner) take their proper positions in the boat, the former
-  at the stern and the latter at the bow, while suspended in the
-  davits. At the proper moment the davit-tackles are run out by men on
-  deck, and the boats drop with a lively splash; the sprightly oarsmen
-  meantime leap the ship’s rail, and, swinging themselves down the
-  side of the vessel, tumble promiscuously into the boats just about
-  the time the latter strike the water. Although it may be said that
-  there is a general scramble, there is not the least confusion. Every
-  person and thing has the proper place assigned to it in a whaleboat;
-  the officer has full command, but he is subject to the orders of the
-  captain, who signals his instructions from the ship, usually by means
-  of the light sails. The manner of going on to a whale, the number of
-  men and their positions in the boat, and the kind of instruments and
-  the manner of using them, have been perpetuated in this fishery for
-  more than two centuries.
-
-  “Clear away the larboard and bow boats!” shouted the captain. “Get in
-  ahead of the whales, Mr. Braxton, if you can. Here, cook, you and
-  cooper lend a hand there with them davy-taycles. Are you ready? Hoist
-  and swing your boats.”
-
-  Down went the larboard boat and the bow boat almost simultaneously.
-
-  “Shove off! Up sail! Out oars! Pull ahead!” were the orders from
-  Mr. Braxton, the officer of the larboard boat, in rapid succession.
-  “Let’s get clear of the ship. Come, bear a hand with that sail, do,”
-  he added, coaxingly, with his eye on the third mate’s boat. “Don’t
-  let ’em get in ahead of us.”
-
-  “All right, sir; here you go, sheet,” replied Vera, the harpooner,
-  a well-developed and intelligent American-Portuguese, with his
-  accustomed good spirits.
-
-  Hastily laying aside his paddle, like a tiger couchant, with eager
-  eyes upon his prey, he picked up his harpoon, and stood erect, his
-  tall, muscular frame swaying above the head of the boat. He placed
-  his thigh in the clumsy-cleat,—a contrivance to steady the harpooner
-  against the motions of the waves,— and with his long, springy
-  arms turned and balanced the harpoon-pole previous to poising the
-  instrument in the air.... Under the motive power of sail and paddle
-  the space between the boat and whale was rapidly diminishing, and
-  apparently they would soon come into collision. The enormous head
-  of the cetacean, as it plowed a wide furrow in the ocean, and the
-  tall column of vapor rising from the blow-holes, as it spouted ten
-  or twelve feet in the air, were to be seen right ahead; the expired
-  air, as it rushed like steam from a valve, could be heard near by;
-  the bunch of the neck and the hump were plainly visible as they rose
-  and fell with the swell of the waves; and the terrible commotion of
-  the troubled waters, fanned by the gigantic flukes, left a swath of
-  foaming and dancing waves clearly outlined upon the surface of the
-  sea....
-
-  Mr. Braxton laid the boat off gracefully to starboard, and the
-  mastodonic head of a genuine spermaceti whale loomed up on our port
-  bow. The junk was seamed and scarred with many a wound received in
-  fierce and angry struggles for supremacy with individuals of its own
-  species, or perhaps with the kraken; the foaming waters ran up and
-  down the great shining black head, exposing from time to time the
-  long, rakish under-jaw; but what small eyes!
-
-  “Now!” shouted the officer, as if Vera was a half-mile off, instead
-  of about twenty-five feet. “Give him some, boy! Give him—!” But his
-  well-trained and faithful harpooner had already darted the harpoon
-  into the glistening black skin just abaft the fin; the boat was
-  enveloped in a foam-cloud—the “white water” of the whalemen, stirred
-  up by the tremendous flukes of the whale.
-
-  “Stern all!” shouted the officer; and the boat was quickly propelled
-  backward by the oarsmen, to clear it from the whale. “Are you fast,
-  boy?”
-
-  “Fust iron in, sir; can’t tell second,” replied Vera; but the
-  zip-zip-zip of the line as it fairly leaped from the tub and went
-  spinning round the loggerhead and through the chocks, sending up
-  a cloud of smoke produced by friction, indicated the presence of
-  healthy game.
-
-  “Wet line! wet line!” shouted Mr. Braxton, as he went forward to kill
-  the whale, and Vera came aft to steer the boat, unstepping the mast
-  on his way; for all whales are now struck under sail. The whale,
-  however, soon turned flukes, and went head first to the depths below.
-  Meantime, the other whales had taken the alarm, and with their noses
-  in the air, were showing a “clean pair of heels” to windward.
-
-  The boat lay by awaiting the “rising” of the cetacean. Twenty minutes
-  passed, twenty-five, stroke-oarsman began to feel hungry; thirty,
-  thirty-five, and still the line was either slowly running out or
-  taut; but soon it began to slacken. “Haul line! haul line!” said
-  the officer, peering into the water. “He’s stopped.” The line was
-  retrieved as fast as possible and carefully laid in loose coils on
-  the after platform. “Haul line, he’s coming! Coil line clear, Vera!”
-  said Mr. Braxton, shading his eyes with his hand and looking over the
-  gunwale at an immense opaque spot beginning to outline itself in the
-  depths below.
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  DRAWN BY W. TABER.      ENGRAVED BY J. W. EVANS.
-
-FAST TO A WHALE.]
-
-  “Look out! Here he comes! Stern all! Look out for whale!”
-
-  But the mate’s injunctions were received too late. The whale, fairly
-  out of breath, came up with a bound and a puff, scattering the water
-  in all directions, and catching the keel of the boat on the bunch of
-  its neck. The boat bounded from this part of the whale’s anatomy to
-  the hump, and, careening to starboard, shot the crew first on the
-  whale’s side and then into the water. The stroke-oarsman now began
-  to feel wet. The whale, terrified beyond measure by the tickling
-  sensation of the little thirty-foot boat creeping down its back,
-  caught the frail cedar craft on one corner of its flukes, and tossed
-  it gracefully, but perhaps not intentionally, into the air, as one
-  would play with a light rubber ball. As the boat descended, with one
-  tremendous “side wipe” of the mighty caudal fin, and with a terrible
-  crash that was heard on the ship nearly two miles away, the whale
-  smashed it into kindling-wood.
-
-[Illustration: A WHALE-BOAT CUT IN TWO.]
-
-This is only one of the exciting tales Mr. Brown has to tell, and the
-history of whaling in every country could add many more. He tells us
-that approaching a whale at all times is like going into battle, and
-says that many of the deeds remembered by old hands were purely heroic,
-since the danger might have been avoided by declining to attack the
-animal under the especially hazardous conditions that often present
-themselves.
-
-The persecution suffered by whales of all kinds in all parts of the
-world made the more valuable kinds so scarce by the middle of the
-present century that many voyages were almost fruitless, not only by
-reason of small catches, but because the substitutes invented for
-whalebone, and the constantly increasing use of mineral oils had
-lowered prices to an almost ruinous level. The American fleets suffered
-with the rest, until during the Civil War they were nearly swept from
-the seas by the ravages of the _Shenandoah_ and other Confederate
-privateers.
-
-Since then there has been only a partial revival, accompanied by a good
-many changes. A few Scotch and German whalers still go to the northern
-seas, working in the ice, and some American vessels from the Eastern
-States, and a greater number from California search the Pacific and
-the waters off Alaska. All or nearly all of these whalers are provided
-with steam-propellers, having an arrangement by which they can lift the
-screw out of water and use their sails for ordinary purposes. Many of
-them chase with a steam-launch instead of the old-fashioned whaleboats,
-and save their men the back-straining labor of towing a prize perhaps
-two or three miles to the ship. In place of the hand harpoon they have
-several forms of swivel-guns and shoulder-guns discharging harpoons and
-explosive darts by gunpowder, so that a large share of the danger as
-well as the labor is saved to modern whalemen, who are also much better
-housed and fed in their large iron steamships than those used to be who
-wrestled with scurvy in the grim old hulks of half a century ago.
-
-The ships that go up through Davis Straits now frequently winter
-there, in order to be on hand in May to meet the whales that appear in
-the first open water, to which the men drag their boats over the ice
-between their ships and the first open channels. For the same purpose
-many vessels of the American fleet are accustomed to pass the winter in
-company under the shelter of islands near the mouth of the Mackenzie
-River. Here they have a rendezvous where buildings have been erected
-and means for social comfort have been established, such as billiard
-tables, books, etc. These western vessels do not force their way into
-and through the ice, as do those among the eastern archipelagoes,
-but operate in comparatively open water, as long as it lasts, along
-the edge of the paleocrystic ice. Delaying the departure of those
-who mean to return to the Pacific and home until the last moment, it
-occasionally happens that some are caught and frozen in. These are
-usually destroyed, but thus far their crews have managed to escape
-either to more fortunate vessels or to the shore, where, at Point
-Barrow, the government has built and keeps furnished a strong house,
-with stores, fuel, and provisions, as a refuge for shipwrecked mariners.
-
-Walrus-hunting is not much followed nowadays by civilized seamen,
-though the animal is still of great value to the Eskimo and Siberians.
-It has become very scarce in easily accessible waters, but is
-occasionally taken by whalers, who find a market for the ivory of its
-tusks.
-
-Sealing is an industry which still claims considerable attention from
-the Scandinavians and Scotchmen who go to the coasts and waters about
-Spitzbergen, Jan Mayen, and Greenland, as well as to nearer resorts,
-in pursuit of several species yielding oil and valuable hides; and in
-the North Pacific the pursuit of the fur seal still occupies many small
-vessels, but seems likely to come soon to an end. Antarctic seals are
-practically extinct.
-
-The industry of fishing is probably one of the oldest in the world,
-and it remains among the most important, for the fisheries not only
-furnish a vast amount of nutritious and pleasant, yet remarkably cheap,
-food, but many other things useful to mankind. Hence it is not strange
-to find that in all the early reports of the discovery of new lands
-and waters that followed one another so rapidly from the fourteenth to
-the eighteenth centuries, the fish and other sea-animals to be found
-were always given a prominent place in the list of valuable assets
-pertaining to each locality. Even the Spaniards and Portuguese, in
-their insane rush for gold and silver, to the neglect and ruin of
-everything else, had to pay some little attention to fishing and allied
-industries in both the East and West Indies; while in the case of the
-exploitations of new regions by the calmer, more prudent people of
-western Europe—the British, French, Dutch and Scandinavians,—the value
-of the harvest of the sea was really more in view, at first, than that
-of the land, at least when they began to visit and colonize North
-America. Take, as an example, the history of St. Pierre, Miquelon, and
-the others that form a group of islets in the Gulf of Newfoundland,
-half way between Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. Mr. S. G.
-W. Benjamin, in whose “Cruise of the _Alice May_” you may find many
-interesting and picturesque materials for an account of them, tells
-us a French settlement was begun on St. Pierre as early as 1604, and
-that tradition says the islands were resorted to by the Basques two
-centuries before that, as is very likely true.
-
-  In 1713 the colony numbered three thousand souls, and had become a
-  very important fishing port. In that very year St. Pierre was ceded
-  to Great Britain, together with Newfoundland, the French being merely
-  allowed permission to dry their fish on the adjacent shores. But when
-  the victory of Wolfe resulted in the loss of Canada to France, she
-  was once more awarded this little group of isles lying off Fortune
-  Bay, to serve as a depot for her fishermen. The French now gave
-  themselves in earnest to developing the cod-fisheries, determined,
-  apparently, that what they had lost on land should be made up by the
-  sea. In twelve years the average exportation of fish amounted to six
-  thousand quintals, giving employment to over two hundred smacks,
-  sailed by eight thousand seamen. The English recaptured the isles
-  in 1778, destroyed all the stages and store-houses, and forced the
-  inhabitants to go into exile. The peace of Versailles restored St.
-  Pierre to France in 1783, and the fugitives returned to the island
-  at the royal expense. The fisheries now became more prosperous than
-  ever, when the war of ’93 once more brought the English fleets to
-  St. Pierre. Again the inhabitants were forced to fly. By the peace
-  of Amiens, in 1802, France regained possession of this singularly
-  evanescent possession, and lost it the following year, when the town
-  was destroyed. In 1816 St. Pierre and Miquelon were finally re-ceded
-  to France, in whose power they have ever since remained.
-
-[Illustration: CURING FISH AT ST. PIERRE.]
-
-As these islands were of no use to any one for any other purpose, all
-this struggle for their possession was in order to retain the privilege
-and naval control of fishing in those waters. The French government has
-carefully fostered this interest ever since, and now the islands not
-only have a settled population of several thousand, but at the height
-of the season sometimes as many as ten thousand strangers (sailors and
-fishermen) congregate at the principal port, St. Pierre, which is one
-of the most important centers in the world for the marketing, curing,
-and export of sea-caught fish.
-
-Of all waters those of the North Atlantic seem to excel in useful
-fishes; from the oil-shark hand-lining off the coast of Lapland, or the
-sardine-catching of Spain, to Yankee sword-fishing, this ocean is alive
-with fish and fishermen, on both sides and at all seasons of the year.
-
-The whole coast of Norway supports this industry, especially around the
-far northern Lafoden Islands. The North Sea, shallow and cold, is the
-home of many valuable species that are sought by extensive fleets from
-Denmark, Holland, and the north of France, while thousands of British
-sailors make a living along their own eastern coasts and among the
-islands north of Scotland; but the waters on all sides of the British
-Isles are fishing waters, especially the English and Irish channels
-and the western lochs of Scotland; the herring-catch alone is worth
-eight and a half millions of dollars a year, while Great Britain’s
-mackerel-catch amounts to two millions, and her share of the codfishery
-to another two millions. Nearly half of all the products of British
-fisheries are obtained by the use of the beam-trawl—a huge dredge-like
-bag-net, handled and towed by steamers in pretty deep water, which
-scoops in everything near the bottom, where the most desirable
-sea-fishes stay. Among the prizes are the turbot and sole—toothsome and
-valuable species not known along American shores.
-
-More southerly are the profitable fisheries for pilchards, sprats, and
-especially sardines—little fishes taken in vast numbers and canned or
-preserved in various ways. The abundance of sardines, a recent writer
-tells us, may be inferred from the fact that the Spanish fishermen
-take annually about one hundred thousand tons of these little fishes,
-having a value of from $400,000 to $600,000. A peculiar method of
-capturing the sardines at night prevails in the Adriatic. The location
-of the shoals of fish is literally felt out by a light sounding-line,
-and by means of the attraction of a fire of resinous pine the fish are
-slowly coaxed into some creek or estuary and surrounded with a seine.
-The demand for wood for use in this and other night fisheries causes a
-serious drain on the neighboring pine-forests.
-
-The _great_ fishery of the Mediterranean, however, is that for
-tunnies—huge fishes allied to mackerel, sometimes weighing several
-hundredweight, and regarded in America as poor food. They have been
-taken by means of pounds and strong enclosing nets ever since classical
-antiquity, and preserved tunny flesh is still popular in Spain, Italy,
-and North Africa, while the same fish is the object of one of the
-principal sea-industries of Japan.
-
-But important as are the catching, preserving, and utilization of
-these and many other European fishes, they are far outranked by the
-marine fisheries for the cod and its relatives, the halibut, haddock,
-hake, etc., in waters about Newfoundland, Labrador, and Iceland, where
-also great quantities of mackerel, herring, and other food fishes
-are regularly obtained. The principal grounds are on the Banks of
-Newfoundland, which have been resorted to for more than three hundred
-years by men from both continents.
-
-[Illustration: HAND-LINE FISHING ON THE GRAND BANKS.]
-
-The Banks of Newfoundland are a series of shoals—submerged islands,
-in fact—which lie off the northeastern coast of America from Cape Cod
-to the farther end of Newfoundland. The shallowness of the water over
-them makes them advantageous places for fishing, because many of the
-species caught remain near the bottom, and in deep water are therefore
-beyond convenient reach. It is possible, also, to anchor there—often a
-necessity.
-
-But just here are presented some of the worst perils to which fishermen
-are exposed. Nowhere are old ocean’s storms worse than on these Banks,
-where the sand is sometimes stirred five hundred feet below the
-surface. The best fishing comes in winter—the season of the heaviest
-gales. The vessels must anchor close together, too, for the areas of
-good fishing are small, and if one breaks its hawser, or the anchor
-drags, there is great danger of drifting afoul of some neighbor, which
-is likely to end in the destruction of both. Then there is ever present
-the danger, in these latitudes of almost ceaseless fog, of being run
-down by the transatlantic steamers, in whose track the fishing fleets
-must anchor. The skipper keeps his bell tolling, or a great horn
-blowing, but if a steamer comes down the wind her lookout will hardly
-be able to hear it before it is too late to stop or change the course
-of the monster rushing at full speed through the thickness of mist and
-flying spray. “Before anything can be done the relentless iron prow
-cuts into the schooner, which for a moment quivers and then disappears
-into the depths.... One of these great iron ships might cut the bows
-off a fishing schooner of sixty or eighty tons and not, perhaps,
-experience a sufficient shock to alarm the passengers sleeping calmly
-in their staterooms.”
-
-The vessels which go upon this perilous quest are the stanchest,
-swiftest, and withal handsomest little vessels that sail our seas.
-Their rig is adapted to this purpose, and spreads almost as much canvas
-as a racing-yacht, which, in fact, on this side of the Atlantic has
-been modeled from Banks fishermen. The best of them probably are those
-hailing from Gloucester, Mass., and these are never used for any other
-purpose.
-
-The old-fashioned hand-line fishing, such as still holds a place in the
-mackerel fisheries—although even there it has given way in most vessels
-to purse-netting,—is no longer practised in the American codfishery,
-which now uses the trawl-line altogether, by which the men have added
-to the hardship and danger of their adventurous life as well as to its
-profits.
-
-This trawl is not a huge dredge as is the beam-trawl of the North
-Sea fishermen, from which it has unfortunately copied its name, but
-is a strong rope between three and four hundred feet long, having at
-each end an anchor and a flag-buoy. It is so arranged that when it is
-stretched out and anchored the line will be several fathoms beneath the
-surface. To this line, at intervals of six feet or so, are hung short
-lines, each carrying a stout hook. When the fishing-ground has been
-reached, the captain anchors his vessel, or, if the weather permits, he
-sails gently to and fro. Previously, six trawls have been baited with
-clams brought from home, and one put in each of the six small boats
-which the vessel carries. Two men now put off in each of these boats
-and anchor the trawls at convenient distances from each other, in such
-a way that the trawl-line, with its fringe of hooks, shall be stretched
-taut and at the proper depth. How long they stay down depends on the
-weather—five or six hours, or from evening until morning, is the usual
-period. Then the men go out, and taking up the anchors at one end, haul
-each trawl into the boat, coiling it in the bottom and taking off the
-hooks each captive fish as fast as they come to it.
-
-[Illustration: A FISHING SCHOONER “HOVE TO” IN A GALE ON THE BANKS.]
-
-Simple as this sounds, it is terribly hard work. The trawls are heavy
-and stiff, and armed with dangerously sharp hooks. The busiest season
-is midwinter, and no dread of cold or danger must stop the fisherman,
-who boldly ventures in his little dory into the teeth of a howling
-snow-storm and fast increasing gale, piling the water “mountain-high”
-about him and encasing his body in a sheet of icy spray; this must
-he do, in spite of discomfort and the imminent risk of death, if he
-would save from destruction his valuable trawls and the booty they may
-have hooked for him. A fine day on the Banks of Newfoundland is a rare
-thing; fog and snow and icy gales are the rule, and only the boldest
-courage, endurance, and skill will enable a man to resist that ocean
-and wrest from it his self-support. A vivid picture of the hardships
-and dangers of fishing on the Banks is to be found in Rudyard Kipling’s
-story, “Captains Courageous.”
-
-The intrepid and skilful voyages of our whalers and fishermen, daring
-every fatigue and danger in the open sea, have been schools for the
-best seamen of the world. Every nation is glad to draw these sailors
-into their navies, and it is they who make the bravest yet most
-cautious captains of our merchant marine, showing to their comrades
-and to landsmen splendid examples of heroism and fortitude. _This_ is
-the schooling I meant when I said that in its industries we get not
-only food, but formation of character, from old Ocean,—and this is the
-highest result attainable from either land or sea.
-
-[Illustration: shipwreck]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII
-
-THE PLANTS OF THE SEA AND THEIR USES
-
-
-The ocean was the home of the first living thing, either plant or
-animal, that appeared on our planet; seaweeds and salt-water animals
-are found in much older rocks than any that contain the fossils of land
-life. Moreover, though called a “wide waste of waters,” and seeming a
-complete desert as we gaze upon its restless surface on a dull morning,
-there is a greater number of animals and plants by count, and quite
-as large a variety, under the waves as above them, and the bottom of
-the sea—at all events near its margin—is more populous than any bit of
-woods you ever saw.
-
-There exists in our ponds and ditches a race of plants so minute
-that it requires a powerful microscope to examine them. Under this
-instrument it is seen that they have delicate, flinty shells or armor,
-which is of a great variety of forms,—coiled, globular, boat-shaped,
-spindle-like, and so on,—and always beautifully sculptured. These
-minute and beautiful diatoms, as they are called, move about freely,
-and were long supposed to be animals; now they are known to be the
-simplest of seaweeds, consisting of only one cell. Since life first
-began, these diatoms, and other microscopic plants much like them, have
-swarmed not only in the fresh waters, but in all the oceans of the
-globe, furnishing food for mollusks and all the lowly animals whose
-food is brought into their mouths by the currents. Innumerable, and as
-wide-spread as the salt water itself, every one of these myriads of
-minute plants has left a record; for its delicate, glass-like shell
-was indestructible, and when the bit of life was lost, it sank slowly
-down to the bottom. What effect toward perceptible sediment could come
-from a thing so small that it would scarcely be felt in your eye? One
-or two, or even a million, would go for little; but century after
-century, through ages too long for us to comprehend, a steady rain of
-these exquisitely engraved particles of flint showered down upon the
-still sea-floor, almost as thickly as you have seen motes in a sunbeam,
-until there was deposited a layer, many feet in thickness, of nothing
-but diatom-skeletons. Though this went on to a greater or less extent
-everywhere in the sea, such deposits are not now to be discovered
-everywhere, because disturbing causes swept the shells away, or broke
-up the floor after it had been laid down; but in various parts of the
-world to-day, you may find wide beds of rock made up wholly of such
-skeletons, soldered together into hard stone; while in some regions the
-mud of our sea-bottom appears to consist of almost nothing else. The
-mighty chalk cliffs of Great Britain and the French coast were built up
-in precisely this way at the bottom of an ancient sea, whence they have
-been lifted, but they are composed of much besides diatoms.
-
-From the simplicity of diatoms the vegetation of the sea can be traced
-upward through larger and more complicated kinds of plants until
-we reach the enormous algæ that break the gloom of black headlands
-by their brilliant tints, and furnish a lurking-place under their
-wide-spreading and dense foliage for hosts of marine animals—some
-hiding for safety, others to watch for prey.
-
-Seaweeds grow in all latitudes, even close to the pole, but mainly
-along the shore, for below the depth of about one hundred fathoms none
-but microscopic forms are known. These latter float about, of course,
-and many of them have been thought to be animals because they seem able
-to move at their own will. They come to the surface as well as haunt
-the depths; and the Red Sea takes its name from the fact that a minute
-carmine-tinted alga occasionally rises to the surface in throngs so
-dense and wide as to tinge the water for miles at a stretch. The same
-thing occurs in the Pacific, where the sailors call it “sea-sawdust.”
-
-The proper home of the seaweed, however, is a rocky shore between
-tide-marks or just below them, and it is because the eastern coast
-of the United States is deficient in rocks—at least south of Cape
-Cod—that this is poor in algæ, compared with other regions. The seaweed
-has no roots, and only clings to the rock for support; shifting sand
-therefore would not hold it, and there are great sandy deserts under
-the ocean, bare of algæ, as some land regions are sandy deserts naked
-of terrestrial plants.
-
-It often happens, however, that masses of weed will be torn away from
-their moorings and set adrift. This does not necessarily kill them,
-for they go on flourishing while afloat, and such is supposed to be
-the origin of those great areas of “gulfweed” vegetation in mid-ocean
-called “sargasso seas.” You will remember that a branch of the Gulf
-Stream, striking over toward the Moorish coast of Africa, is turned
-southward there, and sweeps down to the equator, then westward again,
-circumscribing a broad region in the middle Atlantic whose only
-currents go round and round in a slow whirlpool; and here it is that
-the gulfweed concentrates in masses sometimes dense enough to impede
-the progress of a ship—Columbus reported among the wonders of his first
-voyage the trouble he had in sailing through it—and covering an area
-between the Azores and the Bahamas as large as the Mississippi valley.
-This is the Sargasso Sea ordinarily referred to in books, but it is not
-the only one. A thousand miles west of San Francisco there is a similar
-collection of floating plants, and others exist under like conditions
-in the southern oceans.
-
-[Illustration: THE MARBLED ANGLER ON ITS GULFWEED RAFT.]
-
-These floating meadows, as it were, are chosen as the abode of a
-long list of animals that rarely quit the safety and plenty of their
-precincts. Among these are innumerable pretty jelly-fishes, sea-worms,
-and mollusks without shells, which cling to the buoyant plants, and
-perhaps feed solely upon them. Here are to be had in abundance the
-fairy-like, rare pteropods, the richly purple janthinas towing their
-curious rafts of eggs, and no end of small crabs. Here a small fish,
-something like a perch, spends his whole time building a nest like a
-bird’s in the tangled weed-masses, and carefully guarding his treasures
-against the large marauding fishes that haunt the place to the dread
-of its peaceful inhabitants; and here those far-flying birds, the
-wandering albatross and the petrels, hover about in search of something
-to capture and eat. The Sargasso Sea is an extremely interesting part
-of the ocean, except to the luckless sailor becalmed and balked in its
-midst, as was Sir John Hawkins when he penned the following quaint
-observations, some three centuries ago:
-
-  Were it not for the Moving of the Sea, by the Force of Winds, Tides
-  and Currents, it would corrupt all the World. The Experience of
-  which I Saw _Anno_ 1590, lying with a Fleet about the Islands of
-  Azores, almost Six Months, the greatest Part of the time we were
-  becalmed, with which all the Sea became so replenished with several
-  sorts of Gellies and Forms of Serpents, Adders and Snakes, as seem’d
-  Wonderful; some green, some black, some yellow, some white, some of
-  divers Colours, many of them had Life, and some there were a Yard &
-  a half, & some two Yards long; which had I not seen, I could hardly
-  have believed.
-
-[Illustration: A PIECE OF GULFWEED.
-
-It is inhabited by two sea-slugs, protected by their resemblance to its
-leaflets, and by small crustaceans, hydroids, etc.]
-
-In favorable places a surprising variety of seaweeds can be picked out,
-and books exist by which you may learn the method of classification
-and names of the different species, the chief of which, for America,
-is Harvey’s splendid work, published by the Smithsonian Institution.
-Not only in the shape and colors of the _fronds_ (as the leaf-like
-expansions or branching tufts of the stem are called) do seaweeds
-differ greatly among themselves, but in size, varying from many
-diminutive or even microscopic sorts to the cable-like growths of
-California, which would measure a quarter of a mile in length if
-stretched out.
-
-Algæ, as I have said, constitute, with very few exceptions, the whole
-vegetation of the salt water, together with a large part of the
-vegetation in fresh water; and they serve the same useful purpose there
-that land-plants do for the dry parts of the globe, continually making
-and throwing off the oxygen which is necessary to keep the water as
-well as the air pure. To this end they do a very important work.
-
-This is not the whole of their service in ocean matters, however. I
-think it may be said that if it were not for seaweeds animals could not
-live in the ocean, as truthfully as that if it were not for herbage no
-animals would be able to exist on land. Seaweeds are fed upon directly
-by all sorts of salt-water life, from mollusks as big as your thumb
-to turtles the size of a dining-table, and they make a shelter for
-thousands of little fellows who never leave their shadow.
-
-But this is a small part of the story. The diatoms, and other minute
-plants like them, form the main portion, if not all, of the food of
-a large number of sponges, polyps, mollusks, and other stationary,
-sluggish creatures, that otherwise, so far as I see, would not be able
-to live at all. These, in turn, are fed upon by larger predaceous
-animals. Thus, though the fishes and cetaceans may never bite a seaweed
-themselves (those large marine herbivores, the manatee and dugongs,
-subsist almost wholly upon it, however), they depend for food upon
-creatures that do. We may say, therefore, that the algæ form the basis
-of all ocean life.
-
-Men have been able to make marine plants of service to them also—a
-resource more important formerly than now. In the last century, for
-example, the kelp trade was the one great industry of the islands at
-the west of Ireland and Scotland, employing thousands of persons, and
-paying vast revenues to the lordly owners of the shores. Kelp is the
-name of any large, leathery sort of seaweed, whose leaves float at or
-near the surface, supported by bladder-like expansions; but in this
-case the word meant the ashes of any seaweed dried in the sun and then
-slowly burned in kilns, clouding the air with huge volumes of strongly
-odorous smoke. The slow burning of the seaweed left the ashes fused
-into a solid mass, which was broken up like stone before being sold. In
-France this substance was called _varec_; and in Spain, where the algæ
-were mixed with beach-plants, cultivated for the purpose, and burned in
-shallow pits in the ground, it went to market as _barilla_.
-
-In those days, kelp ash was the only source of the valuable alkali
-soda needed in manufacturing glass and soap. Then a French chemist
-discovered how to make such soda out of common salt, and the kelp
-ovens were abandoned, except a few in Scotland, supplying the demand
-for iodine and several other chemicals contained in this residuum which
-is so rich in iodine, used in photography and in medicine, that a ton
-of kelp ash will sometimes yield twenty pounds; yet only about 100,000
-pounds are now produced in this way, while five times as much is
-obtained by chemical treatment of Chile saltpeter. It is a curious fact
-that barbarous people have long chewed seaweeds as a remedy in diseases
-for which physicians now prescribe iodine. Iodine is a violet dye,
-and the bluish and purple tints of many algæ, shells, and sea-animals
-appear to be due to the large amount of this element in sea-water.
-
-Seaweeds and other marine plants, like eel-grass, are collected in
-great quantities by farmers in all parts of the world to be used as a
-fertilizer. Shell-mud, dead fish, and other marine products are also
-of high value as manure, on account of the large proportion of lime,
-carbon, and soda which they contain. Indeed, there is a kind of seaweed
-growing at great depths called the nullipore, which takes up so much
-lime from the water that its substance becomes almost like stone, so
-that the plant retains its shape and full size when dried. Some of
-these nullipores are beautifully fan-shaped, scarlet or pink, and are
-often seen in museums, marked _corallines_.
-
-[Illustration: SEAWEEDS.
-
-1. _Laminaria digitata._ 2. _L. longicruris._]
-
-To return to the gathering of seaweeds by farmers, nowhere is it more
-customary than in some parts of New England. Thus the well-known Second
-Beach, just east of Newport, is in the fall of the year the scene of
-a vast activity in this direction. “It may easily happen,” we are
-told, “that the pilgrim to Whitehall, topping the hill on a brilliant
-autumn morning, shall come upon a scene in which quiet plays no part.
-The seaweed, that harvest which, ripening without labor, is neither
-bought nor sold, is setting inshore under the urgings of wind and
-tide, and scores of farmers have crowded to the spot to gather it.
-An artist could hardly wish a better subject for his pencil than one
-of these wild harvestings—the plunging horses, forced far out into
-the surf, their slow return, half swimming, half wading, dragging
-the heavily loaded rakes which leave behind them a long furrow of
-foam, the heaped-up kelp glistening in the sunshine, the oxen, yoked
-by fours, waiting for their load, the shouts of the men, the dash,
-the excitement, and beyond and above all, the wonderful blues and
-iridescent greens which are the peculiar property of Newport waters and
-the Newport sky.”
-
-Cattle and horses that are accustomed to rough pastures, like the
-Scotch and Irish moors, eat seaweed and thrive on it, especially as
-winter fodder, and from several species are derived dishes for our own
-tables. The Irish moss, or carrageen,—which is not a moss at all, but
-a seaweed,—is the most important of these, and grows on both sides of
-the northern Atlantic. In England the market supply comes chiefly from
-the western coast of Ireland, while Massachusetts Bay gives America all
-that is wanted, principally the red, coral-like _Chondrus crispus_. The
-little port of Scituate, Massachusetts, is the chief point of supply,
-where many thousands of pounds are gathered. In early June, two or
-three hundred men and women go to the rocks at low tide and pick off
-the small brown plants, each man getting about a barrel in one day’s
-work. When the tide rises, the people get into small boats and pull up
-the moss with rakes.
-
-The moss gathered each day is taken to the beach, where a gravelly
-space has been prepared, and is spread out to lie bleaching during all
-of the next day, when it is taken up, washed in tubs, and again spread
-out. The washing and drying in the sun continue for seven days, by
-which time it has bleached to a yellowish white. In cookery, jellies,
-_blanc mange_, and various methods of boiling in milk and mixing in
-soups are used to make it palatable. Besides being of value for food,
-carrageen serves to make sizing used by paper-makers, cloth-printers,
-hatters, and so on, to clarify beer in the brewery vats, as a medicine,
-and to make bandoline for stiffening the hair.
-
-Other species beside the Irish moss serve as food in Europe, generally
-in a raw state, often proving the only salty relish which the Irish
-peasant has to eat with his potatoes. One of these is the _dulse_
-of the Scotch (the _dillisk_ of Ireland), which also abounds in the
-Mediterranean, and is there made into a soup. The natives of the South
-Sea Islands eat algæ, which are extraordinarily abundant and varied in
-Oriental latitudes; and the poor among the Japanese and in the interior
-of China, where the weed is sent dried, prize it especially, because it
-has a sea flavor and saves salt, which with them is a costly luxury.
-These people mix it with vegetables and other materials, to form
-thick, delicious soups and dressings. A peculiarly bad-smelling sauce,
-prepared from seaweed, is among the exports China sends to Europe as a
-condiment.
-
-Along the shores from Japan to Sumatra grows an alga which the natives
-of those coasts dry and keep as long as they please. When the substance
-is wanted they steep some of the dried pieces in hot water, where the
-weed dissolves, and then, having been taken off the fire, stiffens
-into a glue which is said to be the strongest cement in the world.
-
-A kind of false isinglass, also, is a product of the Eastern seaweeds,
-and it not only enters into the pastry and confectionery of Chinese
-bakers, but serves to varnish and glue thin paper and to stiffen the
-light transparent gauzes of fine silk used in making Oriental screens,
-fans, hangings, etc., so that painters can decorate them. With a poorer
-quality the bamboo stretchers of paper umbrellas, lanterns, and various
-toys are smeared to give them hard and polished surfaces.
-
-Seaweed has also been used in the manufacture of paper, and its
-complete success in this branch of industry is as yet hindered only
-by the difficulty of perfect bleaching. Certain species of it are
-utilized in enormous quantities by upholsterers as stuffing for sofas,
-chairs, and mattresses; in Japan it is formed into a substitute for
-window-glass; ornaments and small articles of use, like knife-handles,
-are made by several nations out of large dried seaweeds; and, finally,
-albums of preserved fronds are one of the prettiest things to be found
-in a naturalist’s cabinet.
-
-The great majority of seaweeds grow between tide-marks, and they
-undoubtedly perform an important service in preventing the wear and
-tear of the coast in many situations. Some, however, grow in much
-deeper waters, and these, also, may serve as breakwaters of no mean
-strength. Such is the case, for instance, at San Pedro, near Los
-Angeles, California, where the abundant growth offshore forms such a
-barrier to the ocean rollers as to turn the open roadstead into a calm
-harbor within it.
-
-This belongs to the group of gigantic kelps of which those at the
-Falkland Islands and about Tierra del Fuego are other and noted
-species. Were it not for the growth of this strong, cable-like, buoyant
-plant, large numbers of other plants and sea-animals would find it
-impossible to exist exposed to the violence of the South Pacific waves.
-Sometimes the stems reach twelve hundred feet in length, and the
-bladders by which the immense fronds are buoyed up are as big as kegs.
-
-This gigantic seaweed is plentiful all along the Pacific coast of
-America to Alaska, and the natives of our northwest coast used to make
-extensive use of it in the way of ropes, etc. It was from this weed
-that, by a careful preparation, they made the lines for their harpoons
-and deep-sea fishing; and the bladders furnished them ready-made
-receptacles for eulachon oil, for water for their seatrips, and for
-other liquids.
-
-A California correspondent of the New York “Evening Post” gave a pretty
-picture, not long ago, of one of the kelp patches at St. Nicholas
-Island, where the beds of this wonderful plant reach out for a mile
-or more, growing up from the rocks below and forming an effectual
-break; the seas losing their force in their effort to pass through the
-submarine meshwork.
-
-  The vines constitute a veritable forest, and, drifting over it in
-  fifty or sixty feet of water, you may see a perfect maze of stems
-  with broad leaves waving gracefully in the current, forming arbors,
-  arches, and colonnades. Here, poised idly, in rich contrast to the
-  olive-hued mass, may be seen fish of a bright golden color, others
-  in tints of blue and green. The sea swell coming in causes an
-  undulatory movement, and the long colonnades seem to melt one into
-  another, reappearing in different shapes. When the leaves reach the
-  surface, the shore wind, sweeping down from the hills, lifts them
-  from the water, and they flutter in the air like mimic sails. Each
-  leaf is a study. Many are encrusted with a delicate bryozoön, which
-  presents the effect of white lace upon the surface, while a close
-  inspection will reveal minute anemones, coiled tubular worms, which
-  throw out flower-like organs of exquisite beauty; while flat shells
-  lie among them, and crawling here and there are marvels of animal
-  life, shell-less mollusks, which so mimic the weed that it is almost
-  impossible to distinguish them.
-
-[Illustration: DIATOMS, MAGNIFIED, IN A DROP OF WATER.]
-
-  This protective feature is a characteristic of life among the kelp
-  forests that line the entire Pacific shores of North and South
-  America, many animals simulating it so perfectly in color that the
-  best-trained eyes often fail to observe them. This is especially
-  true of the crabs and shell-less mollusks. The latter have not only
-  assumed the exact tint of the weed, but are often covered with
-  barbels of flesh that simulate the tangles of the substance. Upon the
-  backs of the crabs are singular markings in green and white, which
-  so resemble the minute incrustations of the kelp that the resultant
-  protection is complete. [Compare illustration on page 252.] Each vine
-  is fastened to a stone, and the clinging roots shelter hordes of
-  creatures of various kinds—deep-water crabs, octopods, starfishes,
-  and a host of others.
-
-[Illustration: A MARINE NATURALIST.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII
-
-ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA
-
-
-The primitive idea of the ocean was that it was a vast desert, and a
-strange disbelief in its being inhabited by more than the very few
-forms that everybody was compelled to recognize persisted up to quite
-modern times among those who should have known better. Pliny boldly
-asserted, for example, that nothing remained in the Mediterranean Sea
-unknown to him after he had made a list of 176 marine animals! But now
-we know that the sea teems with living beings as densely as do the
-fresh waters or the air. In it began the life of the globe, for the
-fossil records of the rocks show that the first animals lived in the
-ocean, and that ages passed before any of them began to people the
-newly formed lands and breathe the atmosphere instead of the air in the
-water; and, abundant as oceanic life now is, the paleozoic seas held
-immensely greater hordes, of which many forms were giants as compared
-with those of our day. Some of the old straight chambered shells were
-twelve feet long; and I have seen fossil ammonites, extinct relatives
-of our coiled pearly nautilus, which when alive must have been too
-heavy for a man to lift. The fishes, too, could tell great stories of
-the glory of their ancestors in size and strength and numbers. Some of
-them wore solid coats of mail upon their heads, and could do battle
-even with the huge swimming reptiles that were the dreaded tyrants of
-the Mesozoic deep.
-
-Life in the ocean in those old geologic days was a long guerrilla
-warfare—every animal guarding against attack, and at the same time
-watching sharply for an opportunity to seize and prey upon some weaker
-companion. As for the foraminifers and other microscopic creatures,
-they were countless, and their skeletons, singly invisible, have by
-accumulation built up great masses of rock, like the chalk-beds of
-England and France.
-
-Though lessened in numbers and reduced in size, because the land has
-gradually won over to its side many sorts of animals which in former
-ages were exclusively confined to the water, and for other reasons, the
-sea still holds its share of every “branch” and “class” (except birds,
-and it may almost claim some of them, such as the albatross, penguins,
-and petrels), and a majority of the “orders” of animal life. Glance at
-the catalogue: Foraminifers, sponges, and polyps are chiefly confined
-to salt water; starfishes, urchins (or sea-eggs), and the like, wholly
-so: mollusks (next higher) are principally oceanic, and the majority
-of the crabs inhabit salt water. Among the last-named one species, the
-common horse-foot (_Limulus_) of our shores, remains as the solitary
-representative of that immense and varied group, the trilobites, which
-so crowded the Paleozoic sea-bottom that some rocks—for instance, the
-limestones of Iowa—are packed almost as full of their fossils as is a
-raisin-box of raisins.
-
-None of the insects is truly marine, yet some of them are seafaring,
-truly, for they spend their lives on drifting sea-wrack, or on beaches
-just out of reach of the tides; but most of the true worms are dwellers
-in the mud of sea-shores and sea-bottoms. No one knows of any land
-fishes; but I need not tell you that fishes throng in the fresh waters
-as well as in the salt, and that many species inhabit both at different
-seasons.
-
-In respect to the reptiles, of which the ancient oceans contained
-gigantic and horrid types, I do not know any now that are truly oceanic
-except the turtles, if you leave out the “sea-serpent,” of which we
-hear so many wonderful and not quite satisfactory tales. You will hear
-of “sea-snakes” in the East Indies, but they are only certain kinds
-of serpents which swim well, and pass the most of their time in the
-salt water, as several species of our own country do in the rivers and
-ponds; all the oriental sea-snakes are venomous.
-
-It is in this manner, too, that we may count certain birds, such as the
-petrels, auks, penguins, albatrosses, frigate-birds, and their kin,
-as belonging to the ocean. They spend all their life flying over the
-waves, seeking their food there, and some of them rarely go ashore,
-except to lay their eggs and hatch their young on remote rocks, resting
-and sleeping on the billows, when not busy at their hunting. In the
-highest rank of all, however, the mammals, several families are natives
-of the “great deep”—the whales, dolphins, and porpoises, the seals and
-walruses, and the manatees and dugongs. But all these must come to the
-surface to breathe, not having gills like fishes, but true lungs.
-
-As it is only within the last thirty years that machinery suitable
-for deep-sea dredging has been invented, so it is only lately that we
-have been able to learn much as to the population of the ocean beneath
-the surface layer and marginal shallows. Now by means of beam-trawls,
-dredges, tangle-bars, etc., worked by steam-machinery on shipboard,
-naturalists may scrape up the bottom-ooze and obtain living objects
-or their bony relics at the depth of even 3000 to 4000 fathoms or more
-than four miles, for living beings are found in these profound abysses.
-Many scientific expeditions, such as those of the English exploring
-steamer _Challenger_, about 1874, have carried out these dredging
-investigations, and the United States Fish Commission possesses the
-large, specially built, sea-going _Albatross_, provided with all the
-necessary apparatus for deep-sea exploration. By means of these and
-other vessels an enormous amount of study—all useful in ascertaining
-the habits and methods of reproduction of food-fishes—has been carried
-on by American marine naturalists.
-
-It appears that as you go further and further from shore, and into
-deeper and deeper water, the fewer animals and plants are obtained, and
-that very few species indeed which live along shore are to be found
-also at a depth greater than about 100 fathoms.
-
-[Illustration: LANDING THE BEAM-TRAWL ON DECK.]
-
-Almost all animals, moreover, have a limited distribution in the
-sea, as is the case among those on land, though we cannot always, or
-perhaps often, say why the limits we find should exist; one sort of
-crab, or mollusk, or polyp, appearing _here_ and another different one
-exclusively _there_, when the conditions seem to us very similar, and
-no barrier is perceptible. It is not easy to explain why a certain
-sort of cowry, for example, should be found only along a particular
-strip of coast, when nothing that we can see prevents its extending
-its range much further. It is believed that the _temperature_ of the
-water is the chief fact which sets these invisible boundaries to the
-wanderings of animals living near the surface, only a few of which are
-very wide-spread in their distribution. The direction and character of
-the ocean currents have much to do with the geographic distribution of
-oceanic life, as has been mentioned in Chapter II (page 25).
-
-Now in deep-sea life the case is different. Here temperature cannot be
-of so much account, since only a short distance down, the water becomes
-almost as cold as ice, and preserves this uniform chill all around
-the globe. The life found at a great depth, too, is very wide-spread,
-instead of restricted in its range, often occurring in two or more
-ocean basins; but here the restriction is an up-and-down one, rather
-than horizontal, and the secret is found in the word _pressure_. Few
-animals are able to live both in the shallows and under the enormous
-weight of sea water three or four miles deep.
-
-[Illustration: A TYPICAL JELLYFISH.
-
-This species (_Pelagia cyanella_) is a characteristic oceanic
-discophorous medusa, common along the Atlantic coast of the United
-States; it is semi-transparent and lustrous pink.]
-
-This has recently (1897) been summed up very clearly by Prof. Arthur P.
-Crouch, in an article in “The Nineteenth Century,” from which it will
-be worth while to quote a paragraph or two:
-
-  The conditions under which they [that is, deep-sea animals] have
-  to live in the abysmal areas seem very unfavorable to animal
-  existence. The temperature at the bottom of the ocean is nearly
-  down to freezing-point, and sometimes actually below it. There is a
-  total absence of light, as far as sunlight is concerned, and there
-  is an enormous pressure, reckoned at about one ton to the square
-  inch in every 1000 fathoms, which is 160 times greater than that of
-  the atmosphere we live in. At 2500 fathoms the pressure is thirty
-  times more powerful than the steam pressure of a locomotive when
-  drawing a train.[7] As late as 1880 a leading zoölogist explained
-  the existence of deep-sea animals at such depths by assuming that
-  their bodies were composed of solids and liquids of great density,
-  and contained no air. This, however, is not the case with deep-sea
-  fish, which are provided with air-inflated swimming-bladders. If one
-  of these fish, in full chase after its prey, happens to ascend beyond
-  a certain level, its bladder becomes distended with the decreased
-  pressure, and carries it, in spite of all its efforts, still higher
-  in its course. In fact, members of this unfortunate class are liable
-  to become victims to the unusual accident of falling upwards, and no
-  doubt meet with a violent death soon after leaving their accustomed
-  level, and long before their bodies reach the surface....
-
-  The fauna of the deep sea—with a few exceptions hitherto only known
-  as fossils—are new and specially modified forms of families and
-  genera inhabiting shallow waters in modern times, and have been
-  driven down to the depths of the ocean by their more powerful rivals
-  in the battle of life, much as the ancient Britons were compelled
-  to withdraw to the barren and inaccessible fastnesses of Wales.
-  Some of their organs have undergone considerable modification in
-  correspondence to the changed conditions of their new habitats. Thus
-  down to 900 fathoms their eyes have generally become enlarged, to
-  make the best of the faint light which may possibly penetrate there.
-  After 1000 fathoms these organs are either still further enlarged or
-  so greatly reduced that in some species they disappear altogether
-  and are replaced by enormously long feelers. The only light at great
-  depths which would enable large eyes to be of any service is the
-  phosphorescence given out by deep-sea animals. We know that at the
-  surface this light is often very powerful, and Sir Wyville Thomson
-  has recorded one occasion on which the sea at night was “a perfect
-  blaze of phosphorescence, so strong that lights and shadows were
-  thrown on the sails and it was easy to read the smallest print.” It
-  is thought possible by several naturalists that certain portions of
-  the sea bottom may be as brilliantly illumined by this sort of light
-  as the streets of a European city after sunset.
-
-[Illustration: THE BOTTLE-FISH AND THE PELICAN-FISH.]
-
-[Illustration: AT THE BOTTOM OF THE TROPICAL SEA.
-
-The large floating object is the phosphorescent, compound, oceanic
-hydrozoan _Agalma elegans_, a physophore related to the jellyfishes.
-Its tentacles trail over dead corals,—madrepore, brain-corals, etc.;
-while the living reef beyond is crowned by branching corals, corallines
-and seaweeds.]
-
-One of the most striking examples of this vertical distribution, which
-forms layers of animal life, as it were, in the ocean from the abysses
-to the shallows, is shown by the coral-reefs. The foundations of these
-polyp-built barriers or islands are laid by the millions of minute
-individuals of one solid, heavy kind of coral which can flourish only
-in pretty deep water. When these have reached their highest growth they
-cease to propagate there, and a second kind comes and colonizes upon
-the summit of this massive foundation and carries the work a little
-farther up. Then these die off, and a third kind plants itself upon
-their remains and carries the structure to the top, near the surface
-of the sea, where many surface-corals, corallines, and various other
-limy and flinty plants and animals help to erect a dry reef, upon which
-land vegetation can find a root-hold, and where, after a while, men may
-dwell. When these coral-built islands are ring-shaped they are called
-_atolls_, and are believed to be living crowns about the summits of
-submerged mountains.
-
-Men make use of something in nearly every branch of ocean life, from
-humblest to highest. The lowest of all, as I have already said, are the
-foraminifers; it is their skeletons which make up our common chalk. A
-close ally of theirs is the sponge, of which a dozen or so varieties
-are sold in the shops. Sponges come chiefly from the Mediterranean,
-the Persian and Ceylonese waters of the Indian Ocean, and from the
-Gulf coast of Florida. In the Old World they are obtained chiefly
-by diving. Men who are trained from boyhood to this work go out to
-the sponge-ground in boats on fine days. Fastening a netting-bag
-about their waists, and taking a heavy stone in their hands, they
-dive head-foremost to the bottom,—often twelve or fifteen fathoms
-below,—tear the sponges from the rocks, and rise with a bagful, to
-be dragged almost utterly exhausted into their boat, often fainting
-immediately after. This requires them to hold their breath under
-the water for two minutes or more; but none but the most expert can
-do that, and a diver does not live long. In Florida, however, the
-sponge-gatherers do not dive, but go in ships to where the sponges
-grow, and then cruise about in small boats, each of which contains
-two men: one steers, while the other leans over the side searching
-the bottom. In order to see it plainly, he has what he calls a
-“water-glass”—a common wooden pail the bottom of which is glass.
-Pressing this down into the water a few inches, he thrusts in his face,
-and can then perceive everything on the bottom with great distinctness.
-When he sees a sponge he thrusts down a long, stout pole, on the end of
-which is a double hook, like a small pitchfork, set at right angles to
-the handle, and drags up the captive.
-
-The sponges, having been obtained, must be put through long operations
-of rotting, beating, rinsing, drying, and bleaching before their
-skeletons—the serviceable part—are fit for use. Only a few, however,
-out of the large number of species of sponges have any commercial value.
-
-The limy skeletons of the coral polyps form what we term “corals.” The
-round white ones and the variously branching ones may come from any
-one of several parts of the equatorial half of the globe, and are of
-value chiefly as mantel ornaments. The red coral of which necklaces
-and other bits of jewelry are made, especially at Naples, is procured
-by divers about the shores of Sicily and Sardinia, and its gathering,
-cutting and mounting into ornaments, form a flourishing industry in
-southern Italy.
-
-Rising in the zoölogical scale to starfishes and sea-urchins, I can
-only say that the starfishes interest oystermen because they prey upon
-their oysters, and the former often do enormous damage to planted
-beds, especially in Long Island Sound. In the old days it was thought
-that medicines made out of the “stars” and the “sea-eggs” were very
-potent in certain diseases. The trepang—some one of several sorts
-of holothurian, an elongated creature related to the starfish, and
-covered with a prickly, leathery hide, so that it looks like a sort
-of sea-cucumber—which is dried and eaten by the Chinese and Malayans,
-belongs here too; considerable quantities of these queer food-creatures
-are gathered by the Chinese along the coasts of Mexico, Southern
-California and the outlying islands, and are sold in San Francisco
-mainly for export to Asia. The sea-urchin itself is eagerly sought as
-food by the Indians of the American northwest coast.
-
-Coming to crustaceans—do we not eat crabs gladly, from the “shedder”
-to the huge lobster? On the coast of Maine whole villages of sea-side
-people get their support almost wholly by catching lobsters and canning
-them to send abroad. In Virginia and North Carolina, at certain
-seasons, hundreds of men are engaged in catching and shipping crabs
-for market, and in Louisiana large factories are devoted to canning
-shrimps, which are also extensively used as food in the Old World,
-where they are cooked by parching or boiling, and sold by peddlers in
-the streets.
-
-This brings us to the mollusks, in our glance at the useful animals of
-the ocean; and to prove _their_ importance, it is enough to remind the
-reader that these include the “shell-fish” of our coasts—the oyster,
-clam, mussel, scallop, cockle, and all the rest—not a few!
-
-I found by my long study of the subject, when, in 1879 and 1880, I
-was gathering statistics of the United States shell-fisheries for the
-United States Fish Commission and the Tenth Census, that at that time
-there were taken from our waters, of oysters alone, almost 23,000,000
-bushels each year, worth to the oystermen about $13,500,000. During the
-twenty years that have elapsed since that investigation—the figures of
-which you may obtain in full in my Report to the Tenth Census upon the
-Oyster Industries—these amounts have largely increased.
-
-This business employs over 100,000 persons in this country alone; and
-oysters, clams, and other shell-fish are gathered all round the globe,
-forming one of the most important of all natural supplies of food. In
-the most thickly populated parts of the world the natural supply of
-oysters long ago ceased to suffice for the demand, and artificial
-propagation and cultivation were resorted to and now prevail on both
-sides of the North Atlantic, and to a less degree elsewhere.
-
-[Illustration: STARFISHES AT HOME.
-
-This is the common eastern American form (_Asterias vulgaris_) upper
-and under views.]
-
-The Romans, away back in the days of Horace, raised oysters in ponds
-along the Italian coast, and Eastern nations preserved the custom
-during the middle ages, when Europe was doing little except quarreling
-and making pretty pictures on parchment. More recently the French of
-the Channel coast took it up, and the English followed, finding that
-their natural oyster and mussel beds were becoming exhausted. The same
-fate has overtaken our oyster-beds everywhere north of the Chesapeake,
-and largely there; so that now nearly all the oysters brought to market
-are those which have been raised upon private planted beds, which men
-own or lease and attend to as they do to estates on shore; indeed, it
-is common to speak of such under-water estates as “farms.”
-
-[Illustration: SEA-SHELLS IN THE SURF.]
-
-An oyster-farm may be conducted in two ways. One is to place upon a
-certain space of bottom, in some shallow bay, as many young oysters as
-it will conveniently hold. These young oysters, generally hardly bigger
-than your thumb-nail, are dredged in summer from certain reefs in deep
-water, where the oysters are never allowed to grow to full size; and
-to a large extent they are brought northward by the ship-load from
-Maryland and Virginia, which have more “seed,” as it is called, than
-they need for their own planting. These young oysters, protected from
-harm, and having plenty of space to grow, come to a proper size for
-market in about three years, and are then gathered by their owners and
-sold.
-
-Another method is to spread old shells, pebbles, etc., on the bottom,
-to which the floating eggs emitted by adult oysters in the neighborhood
-adhere. The thick “catch” of infant mollusks hatched from these captive
-eggs is then taken up and respread in a more scattered way upon new
-ground, and is allowed to grow to maturity. The oysters raised by
-either of these methods are of better appearance and taste, as a rule,
-than those that grow naturally, because each has room enough to perfect
-its proportions.
-
-[Illustration: MELEAGRINA.
-
-_Meleagrina (Avicula) margaritifera._
-
-_b._ byssal foramen or notch; _g._ suspensors of the gills.]
-
-Mussels, clams of many varieties, and even sponges and peak-shells, are
-also cultivated to some extent, each according to the plan its natural
-habits make advisable. In this way certain great areas of favorable
-ocean-bottom have become as valuable as the neighboring shore-land, or
-even far more so, if you compare, acre for acre, the yield of the crops
-below with those above the water-line.
-
-But mollusks are useful in many other ways than as human food. As they
-are known to be the principal food of several valuable fishes, enormous
-quantities are devoted to baiting hooks in both hand-lining and
-trawling for cod and similar commercial species. The quaint squids are
-mollusks, and these are especially useful for bait in certain places
-and seasons, and are taken in the North Atlantic in vast numbers for
-that purpose.
-
-The shells of mollusks are applied to a surprising variety of purposes,
-from paving roads to making shirt-studs, while their natural beauty
-has suggested their utilization as ornaments in a hundred ways. We
-cut them up by the million into buttons and various small objects,
-such as parasol handles, and polish and fashion them into all sorts
-of knickknacks, thus giving employment to thousands of persons. Many
-ship-loads of shells are brought to New York from the West Indies every
-year for such purposes. I need not dwell upon this, but turn to the
-interesting subject of pearls.
-
-[Illustration: CASSIDIDÆ.
-
-Helmet-shell (_Cassis flammea_).]
-
-Mother-of-pearl is the bright inside surface, or _nacre_, of the large
-oyster that gives us pearls, which are themselves composed of the same
-substance formed in a nodule around some intruding substance, like a
-grain of sand, which irritates the mollusk’s skin until it is made
-smooth and comfortable by this iridescent coating.
-
-Bivalves yielding this beautiful substance exist in various parts of
-the world; but in America the only fishery for the pearl-oyster is in
-the Gulf of California, and that is by no means as productive as it
-used to be. The season for pearl-fishing on the Pacific coast of Mexico
-is from June to December, but the diving can be done only in good
-weather, and for about three hours at the time of low water, since the
-tide there rises twenty feet, which would make a large dive of itself;
-and, besides, the currents are troublesome during high water.
-
-[Illustration: SCORPION-SHELL.
-
-(_Pteroceras lambis._)]
-
-At the right hour the Mexicans go out in their canoes, one man of
-the four or five in each canoe paddling, while the rest scrutinize
-the bottom. It may be rocky and weed-grown, but the water is clear,
-and their practised eyes detect a single round oyster where you or I
-certainly would overlook a dozen of them. Then down a man goes and
-brings up his prize, with perhaps some additional ones. Sixty or eighty
-feet is not too deep for these adventurous divers, who will stay a
-whole minute upon the bottom. No food is eaten by these men on the day
-they dive until their labor has been done.
-
-Western Australia is another fruitful field for pearl-oysters, and
-until a few years ago they were taken there by native blackfellows,
-diving without weights or any other assistance in any water not more
-than ten fathoms deep. The inshore shallows have now been so cleared of
-shells that the only profitable industry is to go down in deep water
-in diving-dress and make a thorough clean-up of each “patch” where the
-shells seem numerous.
-
-The divers find it an interesting and curious world where they
-work, but one full of fright and peril. Some men who attempt it are
-so unnerved that they will never make a second descent. None can
-endure the practice long without ill health resulting; and the native
-Australians will never enter a diver’s dress, declining to go down
-where it is too deep to dive naked.
-
-[Illustration: MITER-SHELLS.
-
-_a._ _Mitra vulpecula._ _b._ _Mitra episcopalis._]
-
-As for the dangers, drowning by some accident to the apparatus, or
-through the stupidity of the boatmen above, is only one of them. The
-warm waters in which these men work are the home of the largest and
-most deadly sharks, and of various other submarine creatures one would
-rather not meet in their own element. Of them all the sharks are most
-to be dreaded, especially by the naked men. As a rule, however, they
-are easily frightened away, or can be avoided by the clever swimmer,
-who quickly stirs up the mud of the bottom, and rises in the fog before
-the dull shark discovers that he has gone. East Indians are said to
-fight sharks quite fearlessly, stabbing them with a knife as they roll
-over preparatory to a close attack. I have read a story to the effect
-that formerly the Mexican Indian divers on our western coast used
-to take down with them a stick of hard wood about two feet long and
-sharpened at both ends. When a shark was encountered from which they
-could not readily escape, they would snatch this weapon from their
-belts, grasp it in the middle, and thrust it dexterously crosswise
-into the widely distended mouth of the monster, opened to seize them.
-To shut down his jaws upon such a skewer would undoubtedly discomfit
-a shark or anything else; but when one thinks of the time, nerve, and
-sure aim it would require to accomplish this feat, he begins to doubt
-whether it really ever was tried. I advise you, therefore, to prove the
-story better than I have been able to do, before you pin _all_ your
-faith to it.
-
-[Illustration: VENUS’ COMB, ONE OF THE MURICES OF CHINA.]
-
-[Illustration: A MUREX (“MUREX PALMA-ROSÆ”) OF CEYLON.]
-
-An Australian pearl-diver, writing about this matter in “The Century”
-magazine a few years ago, assures us that a fifteen-foot shark,
-magnified by the water, and making a bee-line for one, is sufficient to
-make the stoutest heart quake, in spite of the assertion that sharks
-have never been known to attack a man in a rubber diving-dress. He adds:
-
-  Neither is the sight of a large turtle comforting when one does
-  not know exactly what it is, and the coiling of a sea-snake around
-  one’s legs, although it has only one’s hands to bite at, is, to say
-  the least, unpleasant. A little fish called the stone-fish is one
-  of the enemies of the diver. It seems to make its habitation under
-  the pearl-shell, as it is only when picking up a shell that any one
-  has been known to be bitten. I remember well the first time I was
-  bitten by this spiteful member of the finny tribe. I dropped my bag
-  of shells, and hastened to the surface; but in this short space of
-  time my hand and arm had so swollen that it was with difficulty I
-  could get the dress off, and then was unable to work for three days,
-  suffering intense pain the while. Afterward I learned that staying
-  down a couple of hours after a bite will stop any further discomfort,
-  the pressure of water causing much bleeding at the bitten part, and
-  thus expelling the poison.
-
-All the oysters when brought ashore are opened in vats of water, and
-carefully examined for the pearls they may contain half embedded in
-their mantles; but very few reward the diver with gems worth selling
-separately or otherwise than by weight as “seed” pearls. Many divers,
-therefore, do not themselves take the trouble of opening what they
-catch, but sell them unopened at a few cents a dozen, preferring the
-small and steady assured income to the chances of failure or a fortune.
-
-The round, flat, beautiful shells are saved, and their sale
-(for mother-of-pearl work) brings nearly as much money into the
-pearl-fishing communities in the course of a season as is derived from
-the pearls themselves.
-
-What beauty, as well as usefulness, have shells! And how wide is the
-science (conchology) that deals with them, and tells us not only their
-structure and manner of life, but interprets the part which their
-extraordinary forms, ornaments, colors, and appendages play in their
-“struggle for existence” down in that populous green under-world of the
-waters!
-
-[Illustration: ON THE GULF STREAM SLOPE, FROM ONE TO TWO MILES BELOW
-THE SURFACE.]
-
-  I know a picturesque old house [writes a charming pen in one of
-  the early volumes of “Scribner’s Monthly”] that has a many-shelved
-  pantry devoted to the exhibition and sale of shells, collected in
-  many a long voyage to the remotest parts of the five oceans. Apart
-  from their scientific interest, their associations with alien races
-  and far-off countries, how beautiful these shells are in themselves!
-  and how readily might the prevailing vulgarities and absurdities in
-  the decoration of glass and porcelain be corrected by studying the
-  ceramics of nature! How, for instance, is our sense of cleanliness
-  served and our appetite wooed by the extreme smoothness, hardness
-  of surface, and pearly white of the oyster-shell! What decoration in
-  the part that receives the viand, what metallizing the surface or
-  changing it into artificial marble, or covering it up with pictures,
-  would take the place of the pure, colorless shell?
-
-  Every species of these shells has a principle of growth, or law of
-  form, peculiar to itself and yet based upon some more general law of
-  form common to other species.... In the comb of Venus, for instance,
-  the initial impulse of structure tends to produce a series of spines
-  of a peculiar curvature, and arranged after a certain order that
-  involves the use of similar curves. It is interesting to study the
-  development of this simple principle into the complex and singular
-  form of beauty comprised in the shell itself, the idea being carried
-  into the most minute particulars—even the dark markings at the mouth
-  being shaped like spines, and every small projection on the surface
-  evidently being an arrested development of spines. In the _Murex
-  haustellum_, on the contrary, nodules take the place of spines. In
-  the _M. endivia_ an entirely different idea is developed. Notice the
-  cross-striations. Instead of prolonging themselves into cylindrically
-  pointed spines, as in the case of the Venus’ comb, or bunching
-  themselves into knobs, as in the _M. haustellum_, they expand into
-  wonderful foliated projections, the edges of which are beautifully
-  fluted, like the leaves of the lettuce. Another fine effect is
-  afforded by the different texture of the inside and outside surfaces,
-  down to the smallest foliation, the inner parts exhibiting a polished
-  pearly white, and the outside a gray and wrinkled skin. Observe that,
-  however rough or dull of hue the outside of a shell, its lips are
-  always pure and often flushed with lovely color; for, as a rule (and
-  here is another hint to decorators), Nature distinguishes by some
-  adornment the most significant parts of her creatures, where life and
-  use are centered.... The ocean, indeed, beautifies all it touches.
-  Give it any rough shard, and it will so roll it about, and lick it
-  with its waves, and smooth it with their soft attrition, that it will
-  return you a polished and shapely nodule, exhibiting all the beauty
-  of color and surface of which the material is capable.
-
-[Illustration: molluscs and plants]
-
-FOOTNOTE:
-
-[7] It does not follow that these creatures are conscious of this
-pressure, any more than we are of the pressure upon us of the fourteen
-pounds to the square inch of our atmosphere. The point is that they
-_do_ feel it when they rise upward to a point where the pressure is
-distinctly less, just as we are conscious of a difference when we
-ascend in a balloon or climb a very high mountain, and after a time
-we find that we cannot go any farther. Land animals therefore have a
-vertical limit to their distribution as well as sea animals, and for
-analogous reasons.—E. I.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Page heading decoration]
-
-INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
-    _Adler_ at Samoa, 200.
-
-    Agalma elegans, 264.
-
-    _Alabama_, the, in action, 136, 158.
-
-    Algæ, typical, 252, 254.
-
-    _Almirante Cochrane_, in action with _Huascar_, 141.
-
-    _America_, the yacht, 158, 195.
-
-    Antarctic scenery, 101.
-
-    Ardois night-signals at sea, 205.
-
-    Argonaut shell, 274.
-
-    Armada, style of ships of the, 115.
-
-
-    Balloon-sail, 158, 186.
-
-    Battle-ships, modern steel, 134, 142, 144, 147, 150, 153.
-      See also LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIPS.
-
-    Beam-trawl for deep-sea dredging, 261.
-
-    Biremes, Roman, 42. See GALLEYS.
-
-    Boat-davits, 223, 232.
-
-    _Bon Homme Richard_, the, 182.
-
-    Bottle-fish, the, 263.
-
-    Bowsprit, the, and its rigs, 38, 63, 113, 120, 158, 175.
-      See CUTTERS and SLOOPS.
-
-    Breeches-buoy, method of using, 229.
-
-    Buckeye, or “bugeye,” a, 198.
-
-    Buoys, 225, 226, 227.
-
-
-    _Cambria_, model of, 195.
-
-    Cameos, shell used for, 270.
-
-    Can-buoys, 225.
-
-    Canoes, 28, 37, 45, 198.
-
-    Caravels, 35, 61, 63, 65, 76.
-
-    Carronade, an old, 185.
-
-    Cassis, a typical, 270.
-
-    “Castles,” fore and aft, on ancient ships, 35, 57, 63, 65,
-      112, 113, 115, 119.
-
-    Catboat, a Newport, 195.
-
-    Center-board boats, models of, 195.
-
-    Chain-plates, 172.
-
-    Channels, 172.
-
-    Chart, an early, 54.
-
-    Chinese boats, 32. Compare MALAY BOATS.
-
-    Clewed-up, mainsails, 120, 184.
-
-    Clipper-ship, a, 158, 164.
-
-    Coast, destruction of, by the sea, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 58.
-
-    Collision, scene in a, 202.
-
-    _Columbia_, the, 146.
-
-    Columbus, Christopher, flag-ship of, 63.
-
-    Columbus, Christopher, statue of, 60.
-
-    _Constellation_, 184.
-
-    _Constitution_ frigate, 106, 132.
-
-    Costumes of mariners, 117, 123, 142, 147, 157, 172, 179.
-
-    Cruisers, modern steel, 146, 150, 154, 205.
-
-    Crustaceans of the deep sea, 273.
-
-    Cutters, 188, 191, 193.
-
-
-    Day-marks (for pilots), 225.
-
-    Deck scenes, modern, 142, 147, 154, 164, 261.
-
-    Deck scenes on old-time vessels, 117, 130.
-
-    Deep-sea dredging apparatus, 261.
-
-    Diatoms, 257.
-
-    Diving-dress, 258.
-
-    Driver (sail). See SPANKER.
-
-    Dynamite-cruiser, in action, 154.
-
-
-    Earthquake waves, 18, 21.
-
-    _El Chico_, model of, 195.
-
-    Eskimos in summer, 83.
-
-
-    Felucca, a, 175.
-
-    Fin-keel yachts, models of, 195.
-
-    Fiord, a, in New Zealand, 15.
-
-    Fish-curing at St. Pierre, 243.
-
-    Fishes, deep-sea, 263.
-
-    Fishing-boats, American, 245, 247.
-
-    Fishing-boats, Canadian, 5, 17, 243.
-
-    Fishing-boats, French, 7.
-
-    Fishing-boats of the Mediterranean, 38.
-
-    Fishing-pound, at low tide, 17.
-
-    Flare, burning a, at sea, 221.
-
-    _Flying Dutchman_, the, 57.
-
-    Fog-bell, a, 219.
-
-    Fore-and-aft rig, 221.
-
-    Frigates, 125, 132, 136, 182, 184.
-
-    Full-rigged ship. See SHIP.
-
-
-    Gaff-topsail, 186, 193, 221. See CUTTERS and SLOOPS.
-
-    Galleons, Spanish, 119.
-
-    Galleys, ancient, 42, 43, 109, 111, 112.
-
-    _Genesta_, the yacht, 191, 195.
-
-    _Gloriana_, model of, 195.
-
-    _Great Harry_, bow of, 113.
-
-    _Guerrière_, frigate, in action, 125.
-
-    Gulfweed and its inhabitants, 252.
-
-
-    _Halcyon_, the, yacht, 186.
-
-    Hamilcar’s stairway of the galleys, 109.
-
-    Hand-line fishing, 245.
-
-    Helmet-shell, a, 270.
-
-    Homeward-bound pennant, 133.
-
-    “Hove to,” attitude of sails, 37, 247.
-
-    _Huascar_, in action, 141.
-
-    Hydroid, a compound, 264.
-
-
-    Icebergs and ice-floes, 79, 80, 85, 89, 92, 97, 103, 105.
-
-    _Indiana_, the, 144.
-
-    _Irex_, the yacht, 191.
-
-    Ironclads, early, 134, 138, 139, 141.
-
-
-    Jellyfish, a typical, 262.
-
-    Jib-sails, 120, 158, 175, 186.
-
-    Jib-staysails, 89, 158, 175, 221.
-
-
-    _Kearsarge_, the, in action with the _Alabama_, 136.
-
-    Krakatoa, in eruption, 12.
-
-
-    Lanterns, stern, of old ships, 57, 115.
-
-    Lateen rigs, 28, 35, 37, 38, 61, 181.
-
-    Launch, a steam, 153.
-
-    Leeboard, a, 198.
-
-    Leg-of-mutton sails, 198.
-
-    Life-boat, a self-righting, 230.
-
-    Life-saving service, the, 228, 229, 230.
-
-    Light-houses, 18, 213, 214, 215.
-
-    Light-ship, Nantucket, 217, 218.
-
-    Light-ship, Sandy Hook, 186.
-
-    Line-of-battle ships, wooden, 120, 134.
-
-    Lugsail rigs, 42, 43, 45, 48.
-
-
-    _Magic_, model of, 195.
-
-    Main chains, 172.
-
-    _Maine_, the, 153.
-
-    Mainsail or main course, 120, 158, 164, 175, 184, 221.
-
-    Malay boats, 28, 181.
-
-    _Maria_, the yacht, 188.
-
-    _Massachusetts_, the, 142.
-
-    Matting sails, 32, 181.
-
-    _Mayflower_, the yacht, 186, 194.
-
-    Medieval vessels, various forms of, 35, 63, 65, 112, 115, 119.
-
-    Meleagrina, 270.
-
-    _Merrimac_, the, 138.
-
-    Midnight sun at sea, 2.
-
-    Midshipmen of 1812, 123.
-
-    Military masts, ancient, 111.
-
-    Military masts, modern, 134, 141, 144, 146, 150, 153, 205.
-
-    Minot’s Ledge lighthouse, 213.
-
-    _Mischief_ model of, 195.
-
-    Miter-shells (Mitra), 270.
-
-    Mizzen, the ancient (compare SPANKER), 63.
-
-    Models of hulls of yachts, 195.
-
-    Mollusks, shells of. See SEA-SHELLS.
-
-    _Monitor_, the, 139.
-
-    Monitors, 139, 149, 150.
-
-    Muleta, a, 38. Compare FELUCCA.
-
-    Murex-shells, 263, 272.
-
-    _Muriel_, the yacht, 193.
-
-
-    Nelson, portrait of, 129.
-
-    Nelson, signal of, at Trafalgar, 127.
-
-    Nun buoys, 225.
-
-
-    Obstruction buoy, 226.
-
-    Olive-shell (Oliva), 268.
-
-    Outriggers, forms of, 28, 37.
-
-
-    Packet, a Liverpool, 160.
-
-    Paper-nautilus, the, 274.
-
-    Pearl-oyster, the, 270.
-
-    Pelagia cyanella, 262.
-
-    Pelican-fish, the, 263.
-
-    Penguins, Antarctic, 101, 103.
-
-    Physophore, a, 264.
-
-    Pilot-boat, 221, 223.
-
-    Pirates, at home, 179.
-
-    Pirates, Malay, 181.
-
-    Proas, Malay, 28, 37.
-
-    Pteroceras lambis, 270.
-
-    _Puritan_, the yacht, 194, 195.
-
-
-    Raking masts, 188, 198.
-
-    Rapid-fire guns, 147.
-
-    Reefing a topsail, 31.
-
-    Reef-points, 43, 120, 132, 158, 188.
-
-    Rowboats, 45, 236, 239, 248. See also GALLEYS and YAWL.
-
-    Royal sails, 132, 158, 184.
-
-
-    Sails, decorated, 45, 48, 63.
-
-    Sails, various forms of, 31, 32, 113, 115, 119, 181.
-      See also names of sails and rigs.
-
-    Saloon of a modern steamship, 161.
-
-    Saloon of a packet-ship, 160.
-
-    Samoans battling with surf, 208.
-
-    Sandbagger-sloop, a, 197.
-
-    _Sappho_, model of, 195.
-
-    Sargassum, a piece of, 252.
-
-    Schooners, 26,186, 188, 221, 223, 247.
-
-    Scorpion-shell, the, 270.
-
-    Sea-anemones, 273.
-
-    Sea-caves, 10.
-
-    Sea-fights, 74, 106, 111, 115, 117, 119, 125, 130, 136,
-      141, 147, 175, 182.
-
-    Search-lights, 150, 153.
-
-    Sea-shells, 268, 270, 271, 272, 274.
-
-    Sea-slugs (Doris), 252.
-
-    Seaweeds, 252, 254.
-
-    _Serapis_, the, 182.
-
-    Ship, a full-rigged, 37, 89, 92, 120, 132, 133, 158, 184, 232, 234.
-
-    Ship of the line. See LINE-OF-BATTLE SHIPS.
-
-    Ship weathering a gale with sails  furled, 8, 56, 89, 207.
-
-    Ships’ boats, 232, 236, 239.
-
-    Sharpie, a, 198.
-
-    Shrouds, 164, 172.
-
-    Sidewheel steamer, a, 21.
-
-    Signal flags, 127.
-
-    Signaling at sea, 205, 206, 221.
-
-    Signal-mast, a, 142.
-
-    Siren, on a steamship, 220.
-
-    Sky-scraper sails, 132, 184.
-
-    Sloops, 24, 186, 194, 197, 199.
-
-    Sloops-of-war, 130, 207.
-
-    Spanker-, driver-, or mizzen-sail, 89, 196.
-
-    Spar buoys, 225.
-
-    Sponsons, 144, 153.
-
-    Starfish, the common, 267.
-
-    Staysails, 221.
-
-    Steam frigates, 136, 138.
-
-    Steamships, modern mercantile, 161, 167, 181, 223.
-
-    Steam-yacht, a, 186.
-
-    Steering oar, a modern, 239.
-
-    Storm scenes, 18, 21, 24, 31, 56, 200, 207, 208, 213, 217, 247.
-
-    Studding-sails, 132, 133, 158, 184.
-
-    Surf, and its effect, 3, 21, 71, 208.
-
-
-    _Tara_, the yacht, 191.
-
-    _Tecumseh_, the monitor, 149.
-
-    _Theseus_ and _Guerrière_, 125.
-
-    _Thistle_, model of, 195.
-
-    Tides—scene at low tide, 17.
-
-    Topcastles, 63, 111.
-
-    Topgallantsails, 120, 132, 158, 184.
-
-    Topsails, 120, 125, 158, 175.
-
-    Topsails, square, 120,132, 184. (See also SHIPS, FULL-RIGGED.)
-
-    Torpedo-boats, 150, 151.
-
-    Torpedo-boats, submarine, 152.
-
-    Torpedoes and their effect, 149, 150.
-
-    Towing a barge, 170.
-
-    Trying out whale-blubber, 234.
-
-    Turrets, 142, 144, 150, 153.
-
-
-    Venus’ Comb, 271.
-
-    Very night-signals, 206.
-
-    _Vesuvius_, the, 154.
-
-    Viking ships, 45, 48, 51.
-
-    Volcanoes on the sea-shore, 12.
-
-    _Volunteer_, model of, 186, 195.
-
-
-    Walking the plank, 172.
-
-    Walruses on the ice, 80.
-
-    Ward-room of a war-ship, 123.
-
-    _Wasp_, in action with _Frolic_, 130.
-
-    _Wasp_, model of the yacht, 195.
-
-    Waves, oceanic, 8, 15, 24, 56, 57.
-
-    Whale, sperm, head of, 240.
-
-    Whaleback, a, 169.
-
-    Whaleboats, 232, 236, 239, 240.
-
-    Whalers, 232-240.
-
-    Whistling buoy, 227.
-
-    Wreck, 130, 149, 202, 229, 230.
-
-
-    Yachts, models of, 195.
-
-    Yachts, racing, 186, 188, 191, 193, 195.
-
-    Yawl, a ship’s, 105, 223.
-
-    Yawl-rig, the, 197.
-
-[Illustration: Lighthouse]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Page heading decoration]
-
-GENERAL INDEX
-
-
-    Africa, first circumnavigated, 41.
-
-    “America,” origin of the name, 63.
-
-    America, visited by Norsemen, 45, 48.
-
-    America Cup, races for, 190-195.
-
-    American Arctic exploration, 86, 89, 90.
-
-    Atlantic, North, early voyages in, 44.
-
-    Atlantic Ocean, defined, 5.
-
-    Atlantis, the fabled land of, 6.
-
-    _Alert_, Arctic expedition of, 96.
-
-    Algæ. SEE SEAWEEDS.
-
-    Algerian pirates, 173.
-
-    Ancient sea-animals, 259.
-
-    Andrée’s Arctic balloon, 100.
-
-    ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA, 259-274.
-
-    Animals inhabiting seaweeds, 251, 252, 257.
-
-    Antarctic Ocean, defined, 7.
-
-    Arabic commerce, 43.
-
-    Arabs, as navigators, 52, 57.
-
-    Arctic American coast traced, 81, 82, 83, 88.
-
-    Arctic exploration, 77-100.
-
-    Arctic Ocean, defined, 7.
-
-    Armada, the Spanish, 114-117.
-
-    Armor for ships, 136, 138, 145.
-
-    Astrolabe, the, 53, 73.
-
-    Australia, discovery of, 72, 76.
-
-
-    Baffin, voyage to Baffin’s Bay, 79, 81.
-
-    Balboa, discovers the Pacific, 64.
-
-    Banks of Newfoundland, fishing on, 245.
-
-    Barataria pirates of Louisiana, 179.
-
-    Barbarossa, the brothers, 171.
-
-    Barbary States, the, 174.
-
-    Barentz and Barentz’s Sea, 78, 91.
-
-    Barks described, 36, 38.
-
-    Battle-ships, modern steel, 140-148.
-
-    Bering, expeditions of, 80.
-
-    Biremes, Greek and Roman, 108.
-
-    Bjärne’s discoveries, 46.
-
-    Boats of the Egyptians, 28, 30, 32.
-
-    Boats of the Phœnicians, 28, 30, 33.
-
-    Boats of early Scandinavians, 29, 30.
-
-    Boats, primitive, 27.
-
-    _Bon Homme Richard_ and _Serapis_, 128.
-
-    Bowsprit sails, 34, 37.
-
-    Brazil, discovery of, 62, 64.
-
-    Brazil, the name, 66.
-
-    Brigs described, 36.
-
-    Buccaneers, career of the, 177.
-
-    Buckeye, or “bugeye,” 198.
-
-    Buoys and channel marks, 225.
-
-
-    Cabot’s voyage to America, 65, 67.
-
-    Canada discovered, 68.
-
-    Cape Horn, first rounded, 72.
-
-    Cape of Good Hope discovered, 54.
-
-    _Captain_ capsized, 201.
-
-    Caravels of Columbus, 34, 35, 61, 63.
-
-    Carrageen or Irish moss, 255.
-
-    Carthaginians as navigators, 42.
-
-    Cartier discovers Canada, 68.
-
-    Catboat described, 35.
-
-    Center-board, explained, 189.
-
-    _Challenger_ expedition, 10, 272.
-
-    _Chancellor_, voyage of, to the White Sea, 77.
-
-    Charybdis, whirlpool of, 19.
-
-    _Chesapeake_ and _Shannon_, 129.
-
-    Chinese as navigators, 52.
-
-    Clippers, Baltimore, 183.
-
-    Colossus of Rhodes, 211.
-
-    Columbus, Christopher, 59.
-
-    Commerce at sea, history of, 155-170.
-
-    Commerce, early European, 52, 155.
-
-    Commerce, medieval, 156.
-
-    Commerce, modern, 159.
-
-    Compass, the mariner’s, 51.
-
-    _Constitution_, U. S. frigate, 130-133.
-
-    _Constitution_, in the war with Tripoli,174.
-
-    Cook, Captain James, voyage of, 75.
-
-    Copenhagen, battle of, 126.
-
-    Corals and coral polyps, 265.
-
-    Corsairs, the, 172.
-
-    Corte-Real, voyage of, 68.
-
-    Crabs, caught for market, 266.
-
-    Cruisers, service of, 121, 140.
-
-    Currents in the ocean. SEE OCEAN CURRENTS.
-
-    Cutter, rig of a, 35.
-
-
-    Dampier, voyages of, 73.
-
-    DANGERS OF THE DEEP, 200-230.
-
-    Davis, exploration of Davis’s Strait, 78.
-
-    Decatur’s exploit at Tripoli, 175.
-
-    Deep-sea conditions of life, 263.
-
-    De Long, death of Lieutenant, 95.
-
-    Dias, Bartholomew, voyage of, 53.
-
-    Diatoms described, 249, 257.
-
-    Distribution of animals in the sea, 261.
-
-    “Don’t give up the ship,” 129.
-
-    Drake, Francis, 114, 181.
-
-    Dredging, deep-sea, 260.
-
-    Dynamite-throwing, 154.
-
-
-    Earthquake-waves, 203.
-
-    East India Companies, 157, 159.
-
-    “East Indiaman,” an, 162.
-
-    East Indian pirates, 180.
-
-    East Indies, the, 69, 71, 74.
-
-    Eddystone lighthouse, 212.
-
-    Egypt’s grain-trade, 156.
-
-    “England expects every man will do his duty,” 126, 127.
-
-    England’s sea-wars, 114, 129, 157.
-
-    Erik the Red, 45.
-
-
-    Faroes discovered, 44.
-
-    FISHING AND OTHER MARINE INDUSTRIES, 231-248.
-
-    Fishing in the North Atlantic, 244.
-
-    Fin keels, 194, 195.
-
-    Fire-ships, 116.
-
-    Fog-horns and sirens, 219.
-
-    _Fram_, voyage of the, 99.
-
-    Francis Joseph Land, 93, 100.
-
-    Franklin, Sir John, 82, 83, 88.
-
-    French-American naval war, 126.
-
-    Frigates, service of, 121, 122, 130.
-
-    Frobisher, Martin, 77, 114.
-
-    Fundy, tides in the Bay of, 19.
-
-
-    Galiot, the, 112.
-
-    Galleass, the, 112.
-
-    Galleon, the, 112, 116, 173, 182.
-
-    Galleys, early types of, 107, 111, 112.
-
-    Gallivat, the, 112.
-
-    Geography, early knowledge of, 50.
-
-    _Great Harry_, the, 114.
-
-    Greely, Gen. A. W., Arctic work by, 96.
-
-    Greenland discovered, 45.
-
-    Greenland, coasts explored, 91, 96, 99.
-
-    _Guerrière_, story of the, 131.
-
-    Gulf Stream, the, 22, 23.
-
-    Gulfweed (Sargassum), 251, 252.
-
-    Gunnbjörn, 45.
-
-    Guns of war-ships, 145-148.
-
-
-    Hall, Charles, Arctic exploration by, 90.
-
-    Hand-line fishing, 245, 246.
-
-    Hanno, expedition of, 42.
-
-    Harbor-beacons, 225.
-
-    Harbor-defense vessels, 140.
-
-    Hawkins, John, 114, 181.
-
-    Henry, the navigator, 52, 53.
-
-    Hittites, the, as navigators, 40.
-
-    Holland, as a sea-power, 118, 122.
-
-    Howard, Admiral, 114, 115.
-
-    Hudson, discoveries by, 78.
-
-
-    Iceland discovered, 44.
-
-    Indian Ocean defined, 6.
-
-    Instruments for navigation, 52, 57, 73.
-
-    Irish moss, 255.
-
-    Irish sea-wanderers, 44.
-
-    Ironclads, early, 136.
-
-
-    Jean Bart, the privateer, 182.
-
-    _Jeannette_, voyage of the, 94.
-
-
-    Kane, Dr. E. K., Arctic exploration by, 86.
-
-    _Kearsarge_ and _Alabama_, 136.
-
-    _Kearsarge_ wrecked, 201.
-
-    Kelp and kelp-ash, 253, 256.
-
-    Kidd, Captain, the pirate, 178.
-
-    Krakatoa, explosion of, 203.
-
-    Kuroshiwo (Japan current), 22, 24.
-
-
-    Lafitte, the pirate, 189.
-
-    La Plata, Rio, first entered, 69.
-
-    Lateen rigs, 32, 34.
-
-    Lead keels, 194.
-
-    Lee-board, explained, 179.
-
-    Leif Erikson’s voyage, 47.
-
-    Lepanto, victory of, 111.
-
-    Letters of marque, 180.
-
-    Life-saving service, the United States, 227.
-
-    Lighthouses, arrangements for lighting, 216.
-
-    Lighthouses, history of, 211, 212, 213, 254.
-
-    Light-ships, American, 216.
-
-    Line-of-battle ships, 121, 134.
-
-    Live stock carried on long voyages, 163.
-
-    Lockwood reaches “highest north,” 98.
-
-    Lug-sails explained, 133.
-
-
-    McClure, Arctic exploration by, 84, 87.
-
-    Maelstrom, the, 19.
-
-    Magellan circumnavigates the world, 69.
-
-    Magnetic pole determined, 82.
-
-    Maps, early, 50, 53, 54, 62.
-
-    Masts, names of, 36.
-
-    Medieval ships, 33.
-
-    Mediterranean Sea, defined, 9.
-
-    Melville’s search for _Jeannette_ survivors, 95.
-
-    Mercator, the map-maker, 72.
-
-    MERCHANTS OF THE SEA, THE, 155-170.
-
-    Mines, submarine, 148.
-
-    Minot’s Ledge lighthouse, 214.
-
-    Mollusks, utility of, 269.
-
-    _Monitor_, the, 139, 141.
-
-    Morgan, the pirate, 178.
-
-    Mother-of-pearl, 269.
-
-    Murex-shells, 274.
-
-    Myths as to Atlantic islands, 65.
-
-
-    Nansen, Arctic work of, 99.
-
-    Napoleon’s sea-campaigns, 122.
-
-    Naval warfare, beginning of, 107.
-
-    Naval warfare, medieval, 110.
-
-    Naval warfare, theory of, 118.
-
-    Navigation, prehistoric, 39.
-
-    Navigation, instruments for, 52, 57, 73.
-
-    Navy, Byzantine, 110.
-
-    Navy, French, 122.
-
-    Navy, Greek, 107.
-
-    Navy, English, 113, 119, 129, 183.
-
-    Navy, Roman, 148, 156.
-
-    Nearchus, voyage of, 43.
-
-    Nelson, Admiral Horatio, 122-128.
-
-    Nelson’s famous signal, 126, 127.
-
-    Newfoundland, discovery of, 44, 65, 68.
-
-    Night-signals at sea, 205, 206.
-
-    Nile, battle of the, 124.
-
-    Nordenskjöld’s voyage in the _Vega_, 93.
-
-    Norsemen. See SCANDINAVIANS and VIKINGS.
-
-    North America discovered, 46, 62, 65.
-
-    North Atlantic, exploration of, 78, 80, 91, 99.
-
-    Northeast Passage, search for, 77, 91, 93.
-
-    Northwest Passage, search for, 77, 81, 84, 87.
-
-    North Pacific explored, 75, 80, 84.
-
-    Nova Zembla, 78, 91.
-
-
-    OCEAN, THE, AND ITS ORIGIN, 1-8.
-
-    Ocean, bed of the, 11.
-
-    Ocean, characteristics of, 9.
-
-    Ocean, chemistry of, 14.
-
-    Ocean currents, 20, 23.
-
-    Ocean, depth of, 9.
-
-    Ocean, effects of upon the land, 4.
-
-    Ocean, life in, 259-274.
-
-    Ocean, saltness of, 13.
-
-    _Old Ironsides._ See CONSTITUTION.
-
-    Ooze, oceanic, 13, 274.
-
-    Outriggers, 28.
-
-    Oysters and oyster culture, 266.
-
-
-    Pacific Ocean, defined, 4.
-
-    Pacific Ocean, discovery of, 64.
-
-    Packet-ships, transatlantic, 160, 165.
-
-    Paddles and oars, 29.
-
-    Paleocrystic Sea, the, 88.
-
-    Parry, Arctic explorations by, 81.
-
-    Payer and Weyprecht, 91.
-
-    Paul Jones, 128.
-
-    Pearl-oyster and pearls, 269.
-
-    Peary, Arctic work of, 99.
-
-    Persians as navigators, 43.
-
-    _Philadelphia_, U. S. frigate at Tripoli, 174.
-
-    Phœnicians as navigators, 41.
-
-    Pilots and their duties, 220-226.
-
-    Piracy, history of, 171-185.
-
-    Piracy in the East Indies, 180.
-
-    PLANTS OF THE SEA AND THEIR USES, 249-257.
-
-    _Polaris_, misadventure of, 90.
-
-    Pope, the, divides the earth, 55.
-
-    Portugal as a sea-power, 52, 55.
-
-    Pressure, effects of, in the sea, 262.
-
-    Prester John, 54.
-
-    Privateering, 180, 183, 185.
-
-    Ptolemy, the geographer, 50.
-
-
-    “Redbeard,” the pirate, 171.
-
-    Rigging of primitive ships, 30.
-
-    ROBBERS OF THE SEAS, 171-185.
-
-    Ross, Arctic explorations by, 81, 82.
-
-    _Royal George_, sunk, 201.
-
-    Rules of the road at sea, 203.
-
-    Russian Arctic coast, the, 79.
-
-
-    Sails, lateen, 32.
-
-    Sails, names of a ship’s, 36.
-
-    Sails of early ships, 30.
-
-    Sails, square-rigged, 34.
-
-    Sails, two types of, 31.
-
-    St. Lawrence Bay and River discovered, 68.
-
-    St. Pierre and Miquelon, 242.
-
-    Salamis, battle of, 107.
-
-    Samoa, the great storm at, 206-211.
-
-    Sandbagger, a, 197.
-
-    Sardines, fishing for, 244.
-
-    Sargasso Seas, 251.
-
-    Schooners, described, 36, 38.
-
-    Scylla and Charybdis, 19.
-
-    Sealing, 241.
-
-    Search-light, uses of, on war-ships, 150.
-
-    Sea-shells, use and beauty of, 269, 273.
-
-    Sea-snakes, 259.
-
-    Seaweeds, 249-257.
-
-    SECRETS WON FROM THE FROZEN NORTH, 77-165.
-
-    _Serapis_, fight of the, 128.
-
-    Seventy-four, a, 121.
-
-    Sharks, as a danger to divers, 271.
-
-    Sharpie, characteristics of the, 198.
-
-    Ship-building, development of, 139.
-
-    Ship-chandler, a, 204.
-
-    Ship, sails of a full-rigged, 36.
-
-    SHIPS, THE BUILDING AND RIGGING OF, 27-38.
-
-    Ships’ lanterns and lights, 204.
-
-    Ships, Phœnician, 155.
-
-    Ships, Roman merchant, 156.
-
-    Siberia, explorations north of, 79, 93,  95.
-
-    Signaling at night, 205, 206, 222.
-
-    Sirens, or fog-horns, 219.
-
-    Slave-trade, the, 184.
-
-    Sloop, a, described, 35.
-
-    Solis discovers the La Plata, 69.
-
-    South America, discovery of, 61, 62.
-
-    South Sea. See PACIFIC OCEAN.
-
-    Spanish conquerors in West Indies, 177.
-
-    Spitzbergen, 91, 233.
-
-    Sponges and their taking, 265.
-
-    Spritsail-mast, the, 34.
-
-    Square-rig, examples of, 33.
-
-    Starfishes, damage by, 265.
-
-    Steamships, development of, 165, 168.
-
-    Steamships, ocean courses of, 168.
-
-    Steamships, records of transatlantic, 166.
-
-    Steerage passage, the, 163.
-
-    Steering, methods of, 29.
-
-    Suez Canal, the, 41, 169.
-
-
-    Table of sea-road distances, 170.
-
-    Tactics, naval, 107, 115, 118, 121, 135.
-
-    Tasman, voyages of, 72.
-
-    Telegraph, submarine, 161.
-
-    Tides, explained, 17.
-
-    Topsail schooner, described, 36.
-
-    Torpedo-boats, 140, 150-154.
-
-    Torpedoes and submarine mines, 148.
-
-    Trafalgar, battle of, 126.
-
-    Trawls described, 246, 272.
-
-    Treasure-ships, Spanish, 173, 178, 182.
-
-    Trepang, or _bêche la mer_, 266.
-
-    Tripoli, bombardment of, 174.
-
-    Triremes, Greek and Roman, 108.
-
-    Tunnies, fishing for, 244.
-
-    Turtles, as a danger to divers, 272.
-
-
-    United States exploring expedition, 76.
-
-    United States, naval incidents, 128,  174, 183.
-
-
-    Vasco da Gama, 56, 157.
-
-    _Vega_, voyage of, north of Asia, 93.
-
-    Venice, state barge of, 112.
-
-    Venus’-comb shell, 274.
-
-    Verrazano, voyage of, 68.
-
-    Vespucci, Amerigo, voyages of, 62.
-
-    _Vesuvius_, the dynamite-cruiser, 154.
-
-    Vikings, origin and voyages of, 29, 44.
-
-    Vinland visited, 47.
-
-    VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS, EARLY, 39-76.
-
-
-    Walrus-hunting, 241.
-
-    WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES, 107-154.
-
-    War-ships wrecked at Samoa, 206-211.
-
-    _Wasp_ and _Frolic_, 129.
-
-    Water-spouts at sea, 202.
-
-    Waves, tides, and currents, 9.
-
-    Weather-stations, international, 96.
-
-    West coast of Africa, 42, 53, 56.
-
-    Weyprecht, Arctic work of, 91.
-
-    Whaleback, the, 169.
-
-    Whaling, history of American, 235.
-
-    Whaling, history of European, 233.
-
-    Whaling, in the North Atlantic, 80, 94.
-
-    Whaling, methods of, 231, 237-241.
-
-    Whaling-vessels, 235.
-
-    Wreckers, doings of, 212.
-
-
-    YACHTING AND PLEASURE-BOATING, 186.
-
-    Yachting, early history of, 187, 196.
-
-    Yacht-clubs in the United States, 188, 196.
-
-    Yachts, designing racing, 192, 195.
-
-    Yachts, rigs of small, 197.
-
-    Yawl, characteristics of the, 197.
-
-
-    Zeni, voyages of the, 48.
-
-[Illustration: Coastal scene]
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-<pre>
-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of the Ocean, by Ernest Ingersoll
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Book of the Ocean
-
-Author: Ernest Ingersoll
-
-Release Date: January 5, 2018 [EBook #56311]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF THE OCEAN ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow, Brian Wilcox and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-file was produced from images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="450" height="600" alt="front cover" />
-</div>
-
-<p id="half-title"><span class="largest">
-THE BOOK OF THE OCEAN</span></p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-<p class="center old">Other books in similar style and binding.</p>
-
-<p class="center larger">
-THE CENTURY<br />
-WORLD’S FAIR BOOK<br />
-FOR BOYS &amp; GIRLS.</p>
-
-<p class="center">BY TUDOR JENKS.</p>
-
-<p class="noindent small">The standard young folks’ book of the Fair. The story of two boys
-who visited the great exhibition with their tutor. 250 pages, richly
-illustrated, from photographs, etc. $1.50.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p class="center">BY ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS.</p>
-
-<p class="noindent small"><i>Issued under the auspices of the Sons and Daughters of the American
-Revolution. Each with about 250 pages and as many illustrations, in
-handsome binding. $1.50.</i></p>
-
-<p class="center larger">
-THE CENTURY BOOK<br />
-FOR YOUNG AMERICANS.<br />
-</p>
-
-<p class="noindent small">Telling in attractive story form what every boy and girl ought to know
-about the government,—the President, Senate, etc. Introduction by
-General Horace Porter.</p>
-
-<p class="center larger">
-THE CENTURY BOOK OF<br />
-THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.</p>
-
-<p class="noindent small">The story of the pilgrimage of a party of young folks to the famous
-Revolutionary battle-fields from Lexington to Yorktown. Introduction by
-the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew.</p>
-
-<p class="center larger">THE CENTURY BOOK<br />
-OF FAMOUS AMERICANS.</p>
-
-<p class="noindent small">Describing a trip to the historic homes of America—Washington’s,
-Lincoln’s, Grant’s, etc. With an introduction by the President-General
-of the Daughters of the American Revolution.</p>
-
-<p class="center larger old">
-The Century Co.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_002_books">
-<img src="images/i_002_books.jpg" width="300" height="475" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">Original Image.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_frontis">
-<img src="images/i_frontis.jpg" width="600" height="359" alt="" />
-<p class="caption"><span class="smallest">DRAWN BY LOUIS LOEB.</span><span class="add3em smaller">ENGRAVED BY M. HAIDER.</span><br />
-THE MAJESTY OF THE SEA.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h1><span class="small">THE</span><br />
-<span class="largest">BOOK OF THE OCEAN</span></h1></div>
-
-<h2 class="padt2"><span class="small">BY</span><br />
-<br />
-ERNEST INGERSOLL</h2>
-
-<p class="center smaller">AUTHOR OF “KNOCKING ROUND THE ROCKIES,”<br />
-“THE OYSTER INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES,”<br />
-“FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING,”<br />
-“WILD NEIGHBORS,”<br />
-“THE CREST OF THE CONTINENT,” ETC.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_title_1.jpg" width="25" height="22" alt="printers mark" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="noindent center old">Illustrated</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_title.jpg" width="125" height="129" alt="printers mark" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="center">NEW YORK<br />
-<span class="large">THE CENTURY CO.</span><br />
-<span class="small">1898</span></p>
-
-<div class="chapter"><hr class="chap" />
-<p class="center padt2 small">
-Copyright, 1898,<br />
-By <span class="smcap">The Century Co.</span></p></div>
-
-<p class="center smaller sans padt2">THE DE VINNE PRESS.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">ix</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter chapter">
-<img src="images/i_vii.jpg" width="600" height="185" alt="decorative page header" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak padt1 padb1" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
-
-<div class="center">
-<table class="my90" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="toc">
-<tr>
-<th class="tdr normal smaller" colspan="3">PAGE</th>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl">I</td>
-<td class="tdl"><span class="smcap">The Ocean and its Origin</span></td>
-<td class="tdl">&nbsp; &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">II</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Waves, Tides, and Currents</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1">&nbsp; &nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_II">9</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">III</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">The Building and Rigging of Ships</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1">&nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_III">27</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">IV</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Early Voyages and Explorations</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1">&nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_IV">39</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdl"><span class="add2em"><a href="#PART_I_PREVIOUS">Part I</a>—Previous to the Discovery of America.</span></td>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdl"><span class="add2em"><a href="#PART_II_FROM_COLUMBUS">Part II</a>—From Columbus to Cook.</span></td>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">V</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Secrets Won from the Frozen North</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1">&nbsp; <a href="#CHAPTER_V">77</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">VI</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">War-Ships and Naval Battles</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">107</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdl"><span class="add2em"><a href="#PART_I_WOODEN">Part I</a>—Wooden Walls, from Salamis to Trafalgar.</span></td>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdl"><span class="add2em"><a href="#PART_II_PRESENT_ERA">Part II</a>—The Present Era of Steam and Steel.</span></td>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">VII</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">The Merchants of the Sea</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">155</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">VIII</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Robbers of the Seas</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">171</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">IX</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Yachting and Pleasure-Boating</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">187</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">X</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Dangers of the Deep</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">201</a><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">x</a></span></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">XI</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Fishing and other Marine Industries</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">231</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">XII</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">The Plants of the Sea and their Uses</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">249</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl padt1">XIII</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Animal Life in the Sea</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">259</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">Index of Illustrations</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#I_O_I">275</a></td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><span class="smcap">General Index</span></td>
-<td class="tdl padt1"><a href="#GENERAL_INDEX">277</a></td>
-</tr></table></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_viii.jpg" width="350" height="266" alt="oarsmen towing sailing ship" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p class="center largest padt2 padb2">THE BOOK OF THE OCEAN</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter">
-<img src="images/i_x.jpg" width="424" height="600" alt="rescue of man from the sea" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">THE OCEAN AND ITS ORIGIN</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_001.jpg" width="75" height="74" alt="ornate capital L" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">Looking</span> at the land, we divide the surface of the earth into eastern
-and western hemispheres; but looking at the water, we make an opposite
-classification. Encircle the globe in your library with a rubber band,
-so that it cuts across South America from about Porto Alegre to Lima
-on one side, and through southern Siam and the northernmost of the
-Philippine Islands on the other, and you make hemispheres, the northern
-of which (with London at its center) contains almost all the land of
-the globe, while the southern (with New Zealand as its central point)
-is almost entirely water, Australia, and the narrow southern half of
-South America being the only lands of consequence in its whole area.
-Observing the map in this way, noticing that, besides nearly a complete
-half-world of water south of your rubber equator, much of the northern
-hemisphere also is afloat, you are willing to believe the assertion
-that there is almost three times as much of the outside of the earth
-hidden under the waves as appears above them. The estimate in round
-numbers is one hundred and fifty million square (statute) miles of
-ocean surface, as compared with about fifty million square miles of
-land on the globe.</p>
-
-<p>To the people whose speculations in geography are the oldest that have
-come down to us, the earth seemed to be an island around which was
-perpetually flowing a river with no further shore visible. Beyond it,
-they thought, lay the abodes of the dead. This river, as the source
-of all other rivers and waters, was deified by the early Greeks and
-placed among their highest gods as Oceanus, whence our word “ocean.”
-Accompanying, or belonging to him, there grew up, in the fertile
-imagination of that poetic people, a large company of gods and
-goddesses, while men hid their absence of real knowledge by peopling
-the deep with quaint monsters.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“The word for ‘ocean’ (<i>mare</i>) in the Latin tongue means, by
-derivation, a desert, and the Greeks spoke of it as ‘the barren brine.’”</p>
-
-<p>Over these old fables we need not linger. All the myths and guesswork
-that went before history represented the sea as older than the land,
-and told how creation began by lifting the earth above the universal
-waste of waters. The story in Genesis is only one of many such stories.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_002">
-<img src="images/i_002.jpg" width="600" height="415" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A QUIET SEA, AND THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT.<br />
-<span class="smallest">From a photograph.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>Scientific men believe that when our planet first went circling swiftly
-in its orbit it was a glowing, globular mass of fiery vapors; but
-as time passed, the icy chill of space slowly cooled these vapors,
-and chemical changes steadily modified, sorted, and solidified the
-materials into the beginnings of the present form and character, until
-at last <i>water</i> came into existence. This must have been at first in
-the form of a thick envelop of heated vapors, impregnated with gases,
-that inwrapped the globe in a darkness lit only by its own fires.</p>
-
-<p>After that, when further changes had come about,—let us picture
-it,—what deluges of rain were poured out of and down through those
-murky clouds where thunders bellowed and lightnings warred! At first
-all the rains that fell must have been turned to steam again; but by
-and by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span> steady downpour cooled the shaping globe so that all the
-water was not vaporized, but some stayed as a liquid where it fell,
-and this increased in amount more and more, until finally, between the
-hissing core of the half-hardened planet and the dense clouds which
-kept out all the sunlight, there rolled the heated waves of the first
-ocean—an ocean broken only by the earliest ridges, like chains of
-islands, marking the skeletons of the continents that were to follow—an
-ocean sending up ceaseless volumes of steam to form new clouds.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_003_1">
-<img src="images/i_003_1.jpg" width="300" height="192" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">EATING AWAY THE COAST.</p></div>
-
-<p>Yet all the while the cooling of the planet went on. Now, when any
-heated substance cools it contracts, and the globe as a whole is
-no exception to the rule; but a sphere formed of so incompressible
-a substance as rock can shrink only by some sort of folding or
-displacement of its surface. Therefore, as the cooling of our globe
-proceeded, explosions and swellings constantly occurred at weak points
-or lines on or near the surface, where the prodigious strain forced a
-break. That these upheavals were most prominent and extended in the
-northern hemisphere is shown by the fact that the great masses and
-heights of land are grouped there; and the trend of mountain-ranges
-seems to show that the range of breakage and upheaval was in general
-in north-and-south lines. Elsewhere, and mainly in the southern
-hemisphere, broad areas of perhaps stiffer crust sank downward, making
-the vast depressions into which poured the waters of the primeval sea,
-and where our oceans still sway and roll.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_003_2">
-<img src="images/i_003_2.jpg" width="300" height="470" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SURF AT FORT DUMPLING, R. I.</p></div>
-
-<p>All these changes, however, have been in the direction of insuring
-more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span> and more stability; and when the ocean water had thoroughly
-cooled, the very chill of its vast masses in the depths of the troughs
-assisted in the work, for the cold water, by more rapidly withdrawing
-their heat, caused the rocks beneath their basins to become denser,
-thicker, stronger, and consequently less liable to break or change,
-than were those rocks forming the foundations of the continents.</p>
-
-<p>The moment it had shores to beat upon, that moment the ocean began
-to knock them to pieces under its pounding surf, and to grind the
-fragments so small that they could be drifted away, reassorted, and
-deposited wherever the water was sufficiently quiet to let them fall.
-The original rocks—chiefly granite—held the different forms of lime,
-magnesia, etc., to make the limestones; the silica to make the gritty
-sandstones; the alumina to make the clays; and so on. The sea not only
-was the agent to eat this old, rich crust to pieces and respread it
-into strata, but to sort out for us the materials to a considerable
-extent, laying down beds of limestone by themselves, and sandstone,
-shales, marl, etc., by themselves. It is probable, says Professor
-Shaler, that layers of rock twenty miles in thickness have thus been
-laid down on the gradually settling ocean floor, much of which has been
-raised again to form continental lands.</p>
-
-<p>Hitherto we have spoken of the waters that surround the continents as
-if they formed one mass, as, practically, they do; but for convenience
-sake we may designate certain areas by separate names, which ought
-now to be defined. Thus the larger, more open spaces are known as
-<i>oceans</i>, and of these five are recognized, namely, Pacific, Atlantic,
-Indian, Arctic, and Antarctic. Parts or branches of these, more or less
-inclosed by land and usually comparatively shallow, are termed <i>seas</i>.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Pacific Ocean</i> is the largest, it alone covering more space than
-all the continents combined, having a breadth, east and west, of ten
-thousand miles (about the length of the Atlantic), and an area of
-seventy million square miles. The equator divides it into the North
-and South Pacific. The former is comparatively free from islands,
-and is inclosed northward by the approaching extremities of Alaska
-and Siberia; while the latter widens at the south into the boundless
-Antarctic Ocean. Its basin is a vast depression of fairly uniform
-depth, studded in the western part by island peaks,—the summits of
-submerged volcanic mountain-ranges. The name “Pacific,” or “Peaceful,”
-was given to it by Magalhaens (Magellan), its first navigator, in 1540
-<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">(see Chapter IV)</a>, in his joy at having escaped from the tempestuous
-experience he had long endured in the South Atlantic. On the whole the
-Pacific deserves its name as compared with the Atlantic—a fact chiefly
-due to its great size. The term “South Sea” was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span> formerly much used for
-it, but English-speaking persons now usually mean by that phrase the
-island-studded district between Hawaii and Australia.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_005">
-<img src="images/i_005.jpg" width="422" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">PERC&Eacute; ROCK, IN THE GULF OF ST. LAWRENCE, SHOWING
-DESTRUCTION OF SHORE-ROCKS BY WATER.</p></div>
-
-<p><i>The Atlantic</i> commemorates in its name the myth of Atlas and his
-island. Atlas seems to have been originally, among the Greeks, the
-name of the Peak of Tenerife, of which they had vague information from
-the earlier<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span> Phenician sea-wanderers. Then this was forgotten, and in
-place of the fact arose a myth of a Titan who stood upon a vast island
-in or beyond the “Western Sea,” called Atlantis. Legends of wars with
-its people form a part of the nebulous hero-story of the beginnings of
-Athens; and it is said to have sunk out of sight long before records
-began. There have always been those who believed this story founded
-upon fact, and only a few years ago a book was printed in the United
-States arguing that the tale was the history of a real land; but not
-only is there no literary or historical evidence that Atlantis had
-any firmer foundation than vague memories of the Cape Verd or Canary
-Islands, but every evidence of the geological condition and history
-of the eastern shores and bed of the middle Atlantic Ocean shows that
-no such convulsion as the destruction of this island calls for ever
-took place there, or that there was ever such a land to be submerged.
-The Atlantic occupies a long, winding, comparatively narrow trough,
-that measures about ten thousand miles north and south, from the ice
-of the Antarctic to the ice of the Arctic ocean, and has only a few
-islets south of Iceland, the Faroes and the Shetlands, which rise from
-a plateau stretching from Labrador to Great Britain, the higher points
-of which were probably above the water within comparatively recent
-geological times, possibly since man appeared upon the globe. The
-average depth of the Atlantic south of this ridge is about thirteen
-thousand feet, but greater depths are found along the African and
-American coasts, on each side of a long submerged ridge from which rise
-the isolated islands of Cape Verd, St. Helena, and Tristan da Cunha.
-The width from Norway to Greenland is only about eight hundred miles,
-but between Montevideo and Cape Town it is thirty-six hundred miles,
-and the average width is about three thousand miles. The shape and
-situation of the Atlantic make it the most stormy of the three great
-oceans, and it is the one where the phenomena of tides, currents, etc.,
-are most prominently manifested, as we shall see. It is also the most
-frequented and best known, because it has been necessary to study it
-for the benefit of commerce.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Indian Ocean</i> is simply the extension of the vast southern
-water-zone northward of parallel 40&deg;, south latitude, where, from the
-Cape of Good Hope to Tasmania, it is six thousand miles in width.
-At this line the depth suddenly decreases, as though the edge of a
-submerged Antarctic plateau defined the southerly rim of its basin
-there. This ocean contains several large and some groups of small
-islands, but these are mostly near the shore, and connected with the
-neighboring continent by shallow waters, showing that they rise from
-a submerged plateau. The average depth of the Indian Ocean is about
-fourteen thousand feet; its surface-water is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span> warmer and salter than
-that of any other; and its winds and weather are more regular and
-peaceful than in either the Atlantic or the North Pacific.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Arctic Ocean</i> is the well-defined body of water around and
-probably over the north pole. It is connected with the Pacific only
-by the narrow and very shallow Bering Strait, and with the Atlantic
-by comparatively narrow openings. It has been fairly well explored as
-far north as the parallel of 80&deg;, and found to contain many islands;
-but it appears that there is great depth of water north of Spitzbergen
-and northeast of Greenland, making it probable that the trough of the
-Atlantic reaches to or beyond the pole itself. Most of its area is
-covered with drifting ice.</p>
-
-<p><i>The Antarctic Ocean</i> is regarded as the space of water within the
-Antarctic circle; but this is surrounded by a zone of deep ocean,
-unbroken almost half-way to the equator, except by the narrow southern
-part of South America and by New Zealand. It is an area, apparently
-rather shallow, of ice, fogs, and tempestuous gales, inclosing lands of
-unknown extent.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_007">
-<img src="images/i_007.jpg" width="600" height="378" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">WAVE-WORN CLIFFS AND PEBBLE-BEACH AT ETRETAT, FRANCE.<br />
-<span class="smallest">(FROM A PAINTING BY WILLIAM P. W. DANA.)</span></p></div>
-
-<p>But these geographical distinctions are merely convenient methods of
-speech. After all, there is only one ocean “poured round all,” and its
-particles are incessantly changed in place and remingled by means of
-a world-wide system of tides and currents, the effect of which is to
-keep sea-water everywhere uniform in character and perfectly pure and
-healthful.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_008">
-<img src="images/i_008.jpg" width="411" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">IN MID-OCEAN: A GREAT WAVE.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">WAVES, TIDES, AND CURRENTS</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_009.jpg" width="75" height="74" alt="ornate capital N" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">Now</span> that we have studied the ancient ocean, it is time to study its
-present characteristics and understand the great and important part it
-plays in the world.</p>
-
-<p>A very striking thing about the ocean is its flatness. Being water,
-it seeks always to find its level; and we commonly assume that it
-everywhere does so, and take the sea-level as the standard from which
-to calculate all heights above or depths below its surface; that is,
-we assume that every part of the surface of the ocean when calm and at
-mean tide is exactly the same distance from the center of the globe.
-This, however, is not wholly true. Careful observation has shown that
-the Pacific is several feet lower on the western shore of the Isthmus
-of Darien than is the Atlantic on its eastern shore—a fact due, no
-doubt, to the crowding of water by the Gulf Stream into the Caribbean
-Sea. The Mediterranean is known to be somewhat higher than the
-Atlantic, and other differences exist in similar places elsewhere.</p>
-
-<p>This introduces the subject of depth—a matter which we have learned
-accurately only within a very few years. In the early days ropes alone
-were used for sounding, and these had to be of considerable size to
-bear the strain; but a mile or so of rope became too heavy to handle,
-and depths below that length remained unmeasured. Then a little machine
-was tried consisting of a heavy weight having attached to it, by a
-trigger, a wooden float. This was thrown overboard. It sank, and when
-it touched bottom the shock released the float. From the time that
-elapsed before the float reappeared the depth was estimated. This,
-however, was little better than guesswork; and accurate soundings
-exceeding one thousand fathoms were not obtained until an American
-naval officer began to use wire instead of rope. From this hint
-was developed elaborate machinery, operated by steam, using steel
-piano-wire, having automatic registers of the amount reeled out, and
-carried down by weights that were released when the bottom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span> was struck,
-making it easier to recover the wire. To these weights (or rather to
-the wire just above them) were attached devices for clutching and
-bringing to the surface specimens of the bottom, self-closing jars to
-fetch water from the lowest layer, self-registering thermometers that
-recorded the temperatures at the greatest or at various intermediate
-depths, and other means of learning the character of the water,
-bottom-material, and animal life several miles below the surface,
-including methods of photographing by aid of a submerged electric
-light. Such investigations, carried on in ships suitably equipped, have
-been prosecuted by several governments, most notably by the expedition
-of the <i>Challenger</i>, a British surveying-ship which circumnavigated the
-globe during the years from 1872 to 1876.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_010">
-<img src="images/i_010.jpg" width="326" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SEA-CAVE<br />
-NEAR GIANT’S CAUSEWAY,<br />
-NORTH OF IRELAND.</p></div>
-
-<p>This and many other expeditions have sounded in all parts of the world,
-and explored large tracts where the water uniformly exceeded three
-miles in depth. The United States ship <i>Enterprise</i>, after passing the
-Chatham Islands in her run from New Zealand to the Strait of Magellan,
-found the water everywhere more than thirteen thousand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span> feet deep.
-Throughout her run from Montevideo to New York the water varied from
-twelve to eighteen thousand feet deep, and Captain Nares and Admiral
-Belknap found like depths over equally vast breadths elsewhere.</p>
-
-<p>Yet even in these basins more profound pits and valleys exist. Several
-places are known near Japan and off Porto Rico exceeding five miles
-in depth; and an English officer sounded 29,400 feet in the southern
-Pacific Ocean, nineteen hundred miles east of Brisbane, without finding
-bottom.</p>
-
-<p>The average depth of all the oceans is estimated at from twelve
-thousand to fifteen thousand feet. As, according to Humboldt, the
-average height of the lands of the globe is only about one thousand
-feet, it will be seen that all the land now above the water, and its
-foundations, could be shoveled into the ocean troughs and still leave
-water more than two miles in depth covering the whole planet.</p>
-
-<p>The soundings and dredgings of which I have spoken enable us to make
-a tolerable map of the ocean beds and to describe their features.
-All the continents are bordered by a shelf reaching out under the
-shallow shore-water to a greater or less distance, and then dropping,
-usually with much abruptness, to the ocean trough. This shelf, perhaps
-originally a part of the primeval continent, bears most of the great
-islands near continents, such as Newfoundland, the West Indies, Great
-Britain and Ireland, Madagascar, the Aleutian, Japanese, and Philippine
-groups, the Malay Archipelago, and others. If you will look at a map
-that has marked upon it the line of one thousand fathoms’ depth along
-the shores of the various continents, you will find it reaching far
-out from the eastern shores of both Americas, the western and northern
-shores of Europe, the eastern shores of South Africa, prolonging India
-hundreds of miles, and embracing great spaces among the East Indies,
-while even the hundred-fathom line would connect many an island with
-the mainland or with some other island, as they actually have been
-connected in times gone by. The fact is, there is not a single proper
-mountain-peak rising out of deep water at any great distance from the
-margins of the continents. All the numerous islands of the wide oceans
-are either coral reefs or the summits of volcanic cones.</p>
-
-<p>Upon this shelf, and for the most part within two hundred miles of the
-coast, are deposited all of the materials torn from the land by the sea
-or brought down by rivers or glaciers, excepting the very finest, which
-currents may float somewhat farther out, and also excepting the rocks
-that icebergs carry away and drop in mid-ocean; but this is not a great
-amount, for most icebergs strand on the shallows off Newfoundland or in
-Bering Sea.</p>
-
-<p>Almost nothing from the shores, therefore, reaches the central depths
-of the open oceans, whose beds are in substantially the same condition
-that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span> they were in at the beginning, except for two things—volcanic
-upheavals in some places, and the remains of animal life everywhere.
-The former exception is a very important one, since it is now known,
-according to Professor Shaler, that volcanoes, by their eruptions, send
-more dust and broken materials to the seas than the rivers and shores
-combined.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_012">
-<img src="images/i_012.jpg" width="600" height="354" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE VOLCANO KRAKATOA (SUNDA STRAIT) IN ERUPTION IN 1883.</p></div>
-
-<p>“Although the deeper sea-floors probably lack mountains,” says
-Professor Shaler, “they are not without striking reliefs, which,
-if they could be seen, would present all the dignity which their
-size gives to the Himalayas or Andes: the difference is that these
-elevations are not true mountains, but volcanic peaks, sometimes
-isolated, again accumulated in long, narrow ridges, but all made up of
-matter poured out from the craters or through great fissures in the
-crust. So numerous are these heaped masses of lava and other ejections
-from these vents that there is hardly any considerable area of the
-oceans where they do not rise above the surface. There are indeed
-thousands of these volcanic peaks distributed from pole to pole....
-Thus on the floor of the North Atlantic there is evidently a long,
-irregular chain of these elevations extending from the Icelandic group
-of islands southward to the Azores. If an explorer could view this part
-of the sea-bottom, he would probably find that the line of craters was
-as continuous as that exhibited by the volcanoes of the Andes.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span></p>
-
-<p>“Besides the volcanic peaks,” Professor Shaler continues, “the
-sea-bottom in certain parts of the tropics ... is beset with the
-singular elevations formed by coral reefs.” But of these I shall have
-more to say toward the end of the book, and I allude to them here only
-as a feature of the invisible landscape beneath the waves.</p>
-
-<p>Over the vast, gently undulating spaces separating these submerged
-lines of volcanoes and the ridges of coral, lies a mat of mud of
-unknown thickness, which naturalists term “ooze.” It is principally
-composed of volcanic dust and of the microscopic “tests,” or flinty
-limy skeletons of minute animals, few of which are large enough to be
-seen by the unaided eye. “Dwelling in myriads in the superficial parts
-of the sea, these foraminifera, as they are termed, sink at death to
-the bottom, over which they accumulate a thick coating of minutely
-divided limestone powder, forming a layer of ooze as unsubstantial as
-the finest snow.”</p>
-
-<p>In regions like the North Atlantic this ooze consists almost wholly of
-such animal matter; but in other regions, such as the South Pacific,
-where volcanoes prevail, it is constantly and largely increased by an
-enormous quantity of mineral matter hurled broadcast by volcanoes,
-all of which are on islands or near sea-coasts. A part of this is the
-merest dust, which slowly settles from the air, perhaps hundreds of
-miles from where it was ejected. A larger part consists of that spongy
-lava called pumice, which is so full of holes filled with air and
-gases that it may float half way around the globe before it sinks, as
-happened after the explosion of Krakatoa.</p>
-
-<p>Into the oceanic ooze, too, sinks so much of all dead fishes and other
-mid-sea animals as is not dissolved or devoured before reaching it; and
-it forms the grave of thousands of men. It is often said that ships
-and other things would not sink far, but would float, suspended by
-dense water or some miraculous influence, only a few hundred or a few
-thousand feet below the surface, for no one knows how long. But this
-eerie notion has no foundation in fact. “No other fate,” we are assured
-by those who know, “awaits the drowned sailor or his ship than that
-which comes to the marine creatures who die on the bottom of the sea.
-In time their dust all passes into the great storehouse of the earth,
-even as those who receive burial on land.” Wooden wrecks probably last
-much longer than those of iron.</p>
-
-<p>I have mentioned that a small part of what the sea tears away from the
-land, or receives from rivers, winds, and other sources, is dissolved
-in its waters, which now contain, no doubt, samples of every ingredient
-of the rocks and soils of the dry land, and very likely some elements
-not yet detected. This solvent power of the sea explains its saltness,
-and it must go on growing more and more bitter as long as its waves
-grind at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span> shores and the rivers run down. The salinity varies in
-degree, water at great depths being salter than that near the surface,
-and excelling in saltness where evaporation is rapid, as under the
-trade-winds, while fresher in the regions of equatorial calms, where an
-immense amount of rain falls; broadly, the lightest (freshest) water
-is found at the equator, and the heaviest in the temperate regions.
-Inclosed, or nearly inclosed, areas become very salt. Thus the Dead Sea
-is what chemists call a saturated solution, being nearly one third (28
-per cent.) salt, and Great Salt Lake in Utah is not far behind. The Red
-Sea contains 4 per cent., and some parts of the Mediterranean nearly as
-much. Taking all the open oceans together, about 3&frac12; in every 100 parts
-(3&frac12; per cent.) is composed of various salts, more than three quarters
-of which is common salt (chloride of sodium), and the remainder mainly
-forms of magnesium. One of the <i>Challenger</i> authors has estimated that
-the oceans contain enough salt to make a layer 170 feet thick over
-their whole area, and another writer says that the amount, if heaped
-up, would be four times larger than the whole bulk of Europe above the
-level of high-water mark, mountains and all.</p>
-
-<p>In early times, indeed, sea-water, which yields about a quarter of
-a pound of crystallized salt per gallon, was almost the only source
-of salt for food. Even yet it is the principal source of supply for
-the manufacture of commercial salt in France, Portugal, Spain, Italy,
-Austria, the West Indies, and Central and South America; and it is
-largely used in Holland, Belgium, and Great Britain. The early process,
-still extensively practised in some parts of Europe, was to admit
-the sea-water to large partitioned flats floored with clay, where it
-evaporated rapidly. The salt-crystals remaining were then collected,
-purified to a greater or less degree, and sold off-hand. It was by
-similar means that our great-grandfathers in New England and along the
-Southern coasts provided themselves with salt, only they used large
-vats arranged over fires instead of earthen basins exposed to the sun.</p>
-
-<p>But analysis of sea-water discloses small quantities of many other
-recognizable minerals. Silica must be there to supply the needs of many
-foraminifers, sponges, and other animals; lime in various forms exists,
-or else such sea animals as mollusks could not compose their shells,
-nor polyps erect their enormous reefs; bromine is present, and to the
-iodine and other mineral dyes in the water we owe the lovely purples,
-crimsons, and scarlets painting corallines, seaweeds, echinoderms, and
-some molluscan shells, as that of the Sargasso-snail (Janthina).</p>
-
-<p>As for gold and silver, both are present. I have seen it stated that a
-voyage of a year or two is sufficient to permit the formation of a film
-of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span> silver all over the copper sheathing of a ship’s bottom, so that
-a frigate returning from a long cruise is really silver-plated; but I
-fancy this is more a matter of imagination than visible reality. Gold,
-in certain chemical combinations, certainly exists in sea-water, and
-may be extracted therefrom. Up to the present, however, the cost of the
-extraction has been more than the precious metal obtained was worth.
-Gold is often washed from sea-sand.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_015">
-<img src="images/i_015.jpg" width="400" height="388" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A FIORD, OR DEEP CREVICE WORN IN SEA-CLIFFS.</p></div>
-
-<p>The ceaseless restlessness of the ocean forms another of the greatest
-contrasts between it and the immovable land—<i>terra firma</i>, as those
-like to call it who have been tossing too long on the “rolling deep”.
-This characteristic restlessness involves some of the most important
-and interesting facts in physical geography; for were the waters
-still,—that is, were the oceans simply huge, quiet ponds,—none of that
-action could take place along the shores which has been so important
-an agent in shaping the world and making it a suitable place for human
-habitation and social development.</p>
-
-<p>On a planet with an atmosphere and changing seasons like ours, however,
-a stagnant ocean is as impossible as a motionless air; indeed, it is
-because the air <i>is</i> always in motion that large bodies of water are
-never at rest, for it is the changing density and temperature and
-movements (winds) of the air that produce waves and currents.</p>
-
-<p>Waves are caused by the pressure and friction of the wind upon the
-surface of the water, as you may readily see at any pond; and the water
-in them simply rises and falls, driving forward a little at the very
-surface so as to cause a gentle current called <i>wind-drift</i>. When the
-waves approach the shallow, sloping border of the land they are checked
-at the bottom by the slope of the beach, while the freer upper part
-goes forward, and the waves speedily lose their rounded form and become
-more and more sharply<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span> ridged and steep on the front side as they sweep
-on until at last they pitch forward in the crash and thunder of surf.</p>
-
-<p>In the open ocean the waves are usually doing little work except to
-cause the surface to rise and fall. The harder the wind blows, the
-higher the waves become, and the faster they travel. This speed has
-been calculated, and has been found to be proportionate to size.</p>
-
-<p>“Waves 200 feet long from hollow to hollow,” we are told, “travel about
-19 knots per hour; those of 400 feet in length make 27 knots; and
-those of 600 feet rush forward irresistibly at 32 knots.” These, of
-course, are under the furious impulse of a gale, and it is marvelous
-that ships can be made to ride over them; nor is it any wonder that
-excited mariners clinging to the bulwarks of some small and heeling
-craft, should call them “mountain high,” and declare in all seriousness
-that they have seen their crests rising one hundred feet above their
-hollows. No such altitude, nor half of it, probably, is ever reached
-by a storm-wave in the heaviest cyclone. An excellent authority,
-Lieutenant Qualtrough, assures us that the highest trustworthy
-measurements are from forty-four to forty-eight feet. The height of a
-wave depends upon what mariners call its “fetch”—that is, its distance
-from the place where the waves began to form. This has been worked
-out mathematically by Thomas Stevenson (father of the late Robert
-Louis Stevenson, the novelist), an eminent engineer and designer of
-lighthouses, who gives the following formula: “The height of the wave
-in feet is equal to 1&frac12; multiplied by the square root of the fetch in
-nautical miles.” If the waves began 100 miles away from your ship, the
-waves about you will be 15 feet high, because the square root of 100
-is 10, and one and a half times 10 is 15 (feet). The highest waves are
-not formed in the greatest tempests, which beat down their crests, but
-when the gale is both very strong and long continued. The worst “seas,”
-as sailors call big waves, are those met with off the Cape of Good Hope
-and Cape Horn.</p>
-
-<p>The depth to which wave disturbance extends depends on the violence of
-the wind, and near shore upon the slope of the bottom. Prestwich tells
-us that pebbles may sometimes be moved at the depth of one hundred
-feet, and sand much deeper, as is shown by the fact that the bottom is
-disturbed in heavy storms on the Banks of Newfoundland.</p>
-
-<p>The weight and power of such on-rushing masses of water are tremendous,
-as appears from the effect on coasts where they strike; but this
-opens up a subject which is too large for treatment here, and I must
-refer readers to geological treatises, and to such special works as
-Professor N. S. Shaler’s excellent “Sea and Land,” where the work of
-the ocean in tearing down and building up its coasts is fully and
-entertainingly explained. I shall have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span> something more to say on
-this point, also, when I come to the chapter “Dangers of the Deep,”
-and speak of the terrible destruction caused by earthquakes, and in
-certain other agitations of the sea not due to the wind, and often
-styled “tidal waves.” There is only one kind of “tidal wave,” properly
-speaking, however; and this is a theoretical rather than an actual one,
-perceptible usually only in that rising and falling of the water along
-coasts twice each twenty-four hours that we call the flow and ebb of
-the tides; and here we see the effect rather than the thing itself.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_017">
-<img src="images/i_017.jpg" width="600" height="483" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">LOW TIDE, ST. JOHN’S HARBOR, N. B.</p></div>
-
-<p>The tide has been an inevitable circumstance of the existence on the
-earth of the ocean, or any other great body of water, ever since its
-origin, yet it was not until Sir Isaac Newton made us comprehend
-the law of gravitation that its mystery was explained. We now know
-with certainty—if you want the mathematical formul&aelig; and so forth,
-consult some good modern encyclop&aelig;dia under the word <i>tide</i>—that this
-periodical rising and falling of the sea is due to the attraction of
-the sun and moon,—to the last three times as much as to the first,
-because it is so much nearer. This attraction is exerted toward the
-globe as a whole; and its visible effect upon the movable water is to
-lift it bodily on that side<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span> nearest the moon, and at the same time to
-pull away the earth from the water on the opposite side, which amounts
-to the same thing; and thus high tides are simultaneously produced
-at these antipodes, which accounts for the two a day. At the same
-time, however, the intermediate spaces have low tides caused by an
-attraction there toward the center of the earth. “There are thus always
-simultaneously and directly under the moon two high waters opposite
-each other, and two low waters at equal distances between them. Owing
-to the rotation of the earth, this permanent system of swells and
-troughs travels from east to west over every part of the ocean and of
-its coast, and explains the regular succession of rising and falling
-waters, at equal intervals of time, which we call the tides.”</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_018">
-<img src="images/i_018.jpg" width="400" height="469" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE EARTHQUAKE WAVE PASSING OVER<br />
-THE LIGHTHOUSE ON POINT ANJER.</p></div>
-
-<p>But the sun also exerts a similar but lesser influence, producing
-four daily solar tides, which most of the time are lost to view in
-the greater lunar tides. When, however, the moon gets into line with
-the earth and the sun, so that both the heavenly bodies pull together
-like a tandem team, as happens twice a month,—at new moon and full
-moon,—their combined action causes unusually high water, which is the
-sum of the lunar and solar tides, and is called the spring tide. High
-water is then highest, and low water lowest. On the other hand, in the
-midst of these fortnightly intervals, when the moon is at its first
-or third quarter, the sun is a full quarter of the heavens (90&deg;) away
-from the moon. Its influence, therefore, acts at right angles to or
-practically against that of the moon, and the solar tides go to swell
-the low waters and diminish the high waters, forming what sailors call
-neap tides,—preserving an old English word meaning <i>low</i>.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Now remember that the globe is not standing still, even while we make
-these explanations, but is revolving at a tremendous speed, so that the
-water under the moon lifted by lunar attraction is changing place every
-instant at the rate of over one thousand miles an hour, and you have
-the conception of a low wave on each side of the earth, reaching north
-and south, highest and swiftest on the equator and diminishing toward
-the poles. These are the true tidal waves. Were the globe covered with
-an unbroken mantle of water, such waves, each about twenty inches (or
-twenty-nine inches at springtide) high on the average at the equator,
-would follow one another round and round the earth at the rate of one
-complete circuit in every twenty-four hours. That must have been the
-case in the primeval ocean before any continents existed; and something
-of it still exists in the belt of unobstructed water surrounding the
-Antarctic continent of ice. It would then be flood tide or ebb tide
-at the same hour along the whole length of any one meridian. But in
-the present condition of the globe, where the oceans are separated by
-continents and broken by islands, the progress of the tidal waves is
-obstructed, deflected, and wholly stopped in a great variety of ways
-and places, so that the hours, amount, and behavior of the tides are
-exceedingly varied in different regions, and are often very puzzling,
-forming one of the most difficult matters with which the practical
-navigator has to deal. Interference of tidal currents forms the
-Maelstrom, off the coast of Norway, whose revolution is reversed twice
-daily, the classic Scylla and Charybdis, in the Straits of Messina, so
-much dreaded by the navigators of old, and many other whirlpools of
-less celebrity. The tidal wave sweeping northward across the Atlantic
-has time to round the northern end of Scotland and flood the German
-Ocean with southward swelling currents before the rising water pouring
-into the southern end of the English Channel has time to push its way
-through that narrow and shallow passage; hence the two floods meet in
-the Straits of Dover, which accounts for the miserable chop-sea so
-sadly prevalent in that unfortunate bit of water.</p>
-
-<p>The natural height of the tide seems to be from two to five feet, as
-shown in the midst of the broad Pacific. “But when dashing against the
-land, and forced into deep gulfs and estuaries,” to quote Professor
-Simon Newcomb, “the accumulating tide-waters sometimes reach a very
-great height. On the eastern coast of North America, which is directly
-in the path of the great Atlantic wave, the tide rises on an average
-from 9 to 12 feet. In the Bay of Fundy, which opens its bosom to
-receive the full wave, the tide, which at the entrance is 18 feet,
-rushes with great fury into that long and narrow channel, and swells
-to the enormous height of 60 feet, and even to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span> 70 feet in the highest
-spring tides. In the Bristol Channel, on the coast of England, the
-spring tides rise to 40 feet, and swell to 50 in the English Channel at
-St. Malo on the coast of France.”</p>
-
-<p>To this cause is also due in some degree those great oceanic currents
-which form another striking fact in the history of the sea; but they
-are mainly due to temperature, wind, and the rotation of the earth.</p>
-
-<p>The drops that make up a body of water are the most restless things in
-the world; they are always sliding down the least slope, sinking out
-of the way of lighter substances, rising to let a heavier object pass
-beneath them, or moving hither and thither in an ever hopeful search of
-that levelness and quiet that we call equilibrium. Furthermore, when
-water is heated it becomes lighter. Should, therefore, a portion of
-the sea grow warmer than the remainder, it must and will rise to the
-surface; and whenever a portion becomes cooled, it must and will sink.</p>
-
-<p>Now, under the continuous blazing sun of the torrid zone the sea-water
-near the surface gets fairly warm,—having an average temperature of
-about 85&deg; along the equator,—while in the polar regions the ocean is
-always chilled by permanent or floating ice until it is nearly cold
-enough to freeze; but these masses of warm and cold water cannot remain
-separate in the universal ocean. The hot tropical flood, continually
-rising, <i>must</i> flow away somewhere to find its level; and it can flow
-nowhere except toward the poles, for there the ever-sinking volume of
-chilled and therefore heavier water sucks it in to take its place,
-while it, in turn, creeps underneath toward the equator, there to fill
-the gap which the escaping warm water leaves behind. So we know there
-is constantly going on an interchange of water—a constant flowing
-<i>away</i> from the equator northward and southward on the surface, and a
-flowing in <i>toward</i> the equator along the bottom; an endless springing
-up in the torrid zone and a steady settling down in the polar seas. One
-out of many proofs of this fact is that the thalassal abysses below the
-depth of a mile or so are known to be ice-cold. This could not happen
-unless they were constantly filled and refilled with new water from the
-great coolers at the poles; for if the water at those depths should
-remain unchanged, it would soon become very warm from the heat of the
-interior of the earth, whence it does constantly extract some heat.</p>
-
-<p>But while this invisible <i>vertical circulation</i> is going on, another
-more visible and interesting set of movements is in progress on the
-surface, forming what are known as <i>ocean currents</i>. These are vast
-rivers in the ocean flowing across its face in certain directions and
-to a certain depth, as rivers make their way along the land. They
-begin and are kept going mainly by a union of the two causes already
-explained—heat and wind.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_021">
-<img src="images/i_021.jpg" width="600" height="547" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A STEAMER BORNE ASHORE BY AN EARTHQUAKE-WAVE.</p></div>
-
-<p>The heat of the sun at the equator, warming, lightening, and
-evaporating the water, constantly tends to draw the colder water from
-the poles, most copiously from the South Pole; but the Antarctic water,
-hastening to the equator, is soon interrupted by the extremities of
-Australia, Africa, and South America, and so split into three great
-branches. That which passes into the South Atlantic goes on northward
-along the western coast of Africa, part of it becoming so warm under
-the hot sun there that it will not sink, but constantly comes more and
-more to the surface, until it strikes against the great shoulder of
-Guinea and is turned sharply westward. Now it is squarely under the
-trade-wind and headed the same way; constantly urged forward by this
-moderate but endless tugging of the wind upon its waves, the current
-can never swerve, but flows along the equator, and for half a dozen
-degrees each side of it, straight across the Atlantic. South America,
-however, stands in its path, and the wedge-like coast of Brazil,
-pointed with Cape St. Roque, splits this great river. Part of it now
-turns southward and swings back across toward Africa, making an eddy
-a couple of thousand miles wide in the South Atlantic, while another
-arm runs down the Patagonian coast. But by far the largest part of the
-divided current is sent northward, past<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span> the coast of upper Brazil into
-the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, where it is well heated, and
-thence poured into the North Atlantic, to become widely celebrated as
-the <i>Gulf Stream</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Gathered in full force, the Gulf Stream flows northward close along
-the coast of our Southern States at the rate of eighty or ninety miles
-a day until Cape Hatteras gives it a swerve away, when it strikes out
-to sea and pushes straight across to Spain, where a branch leaves it
-and runs northward between Iceland and the British Islands, while the
-main body turns southward to mingle again with the equatorial current
-from Africa and repeat its journey all over again. It is in the heart
-of this great circle of currents in the middle of the Atlantic that
-navigators find that dreaded region of heat and calms which they call
-the Doldrums; and here, too, float round and round the wide, buoyant
-meadows of the Sargasso Sea.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile another most important cold stream is making its way through
-the Atlantic, known as the Arctic current. It comes down out of
-Baffin’s Bay, joins a similar flood from the outer coast of Greenland,
-is thrown up to the surface by the Banks of Newfoundland (where meeting
-warm air, it produces those thick and prolonged fogs so common in that
-region), fills the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the bight between Nova
-Scotia and Cape Cod with chilly water, and finally dips under the Gulf
-Stream amid that commotion of winds and waters that makes the track
-of the steamships between New York and Europe the most tempestuous of
-ocean highways. It is the mingling of these warm and cold waters there
-which is chiefly responsible for the stormy condition of the North
-Atlantic.</p>
-
-<p>The Pacific has a similar arrangement of circulation north and south of
-the equator. The Antarctic waters form a cold stream named the Humboldt
-current, which pours up the western side of South America, keeping the
-climate down to a far more wintry condition than it is entitled to by
-latitude, until it reaches the southern trade-winds, which sweep it
-westward straight across the Pacific, where much of it is lost among
-the archipelagoes of Oceanica, and the southern part flows onward into
-the Indian Ocean.</p>
-
-<p>North of the Pacific equator a similar westward current moves steadily
-over the great waste of waters past the Sandwich Islands to the coast
-of China. From the Philippines and Japan northward, however, there
-is a far stronger flow, known to the Japanese as the Black Current
-(Kuroshiwo), which skirts the coast of Japan and the Kurile Islands,
-makes these and Kamchatka habitable, then turns sharply east along
-the front of the foggy Aleutian chain of islands, and broadening and
-cooling as it turns, swings down the temperate coast of Alaska and
-gradually disappears. These two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span> great currents and their inclosed
-eddies are far broader and less distinct than those of the North and
-South Atlantic, but they follow the same laws.</p>
-
-<p>In a similar but lesser way the Indian Ocean has a strong westerly
-stream flowing straight across from Australia to South Africa, which
-is of immense help to ships returning from the East around the Cape of
-Good Hope. From Mozambique the water turns northward to make the return
-round, but here it is complicated by the peculiar conditions made by
-the inflow and outflow of the Red Sea, Arabian Gulf, and so on, and
-by the disturbing influences of the monsoons, until it can hardly be
-defined.</p>
-
-<p>Of all these currents none is as well marked as the Gulf Stream. Its
-blue water is in such contrast to the darker, greenish hue of the
-remainder of the ocean that sailors can often tell when they enter the
-edge of the current, half their vessel being in and half out of the
-stream. If you approach from the west you find that the water at first
-shows a warmth of only fifty or sixty degrees near the surface; but as
-you sail on, this increases until, opposite Sandy Hook, you may get
-as high a reading on the thermometer as eighty degrees, and opposite
-Florida above one hundred degrees. This difference in temperature
-between the eastern and western margins of the Gulf Stream is owing to
-the presence of the great river of Arctic water flowing in an opposite
-direction between the Gulf Stream and the shore. Off Florida the Gulf
-Stream is about sixty miles wide; off New York it is over one hundred
-miles in width, but is less sharply defined. Its depth is hard to
-determine, but certainly amounts to several hundred feet. It is worth
-remembering that, although some guesses had been made at it before, Dr.
-Benjamin Franklin was the first man to study the Gulf Stream and to
-tell us anything of its origin and course.</p>
-
-<p>The way in which some of these ocean currents affect the weather of
-the lands upon which they border shows how great is the influence of
-the sea upon land-climates; indeed, it may be truthfully said that
-only the continents and such great islands as Australia or Madagascar
-have any climate essentially distinct from that of the ocean in their
-quarter of the globe. But the equability that would reign over an ocean
-of quiet water, determining the amount of cold and heat by regular
-gradation in latitude between the equator and the poles, is completely
-upset by the great current-movements I have outlined. Scotland, for
-example, lies as far north as Labrador, and the latitude of London is
-above that of Lake Superior, yet neither have those terrible frosts and
-heavy snows which prevail in Canada, and make Labrador a land of ice
-almost uninhabitable. This difference is due almost wholly to the fact
-that the Gulf Stream pours its warm flood against the coast of Great
-Britain, and even tempers the Norwegian coast, keeps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span> Barentz’s Sea
-largely free from summer ice, and clothes Spitzbergen with vegetation,
-although within ten degrees of the pole. Hence in the forests of
-northern Scandinavia Laps can dwell in much comfort on a line with the
-frozen barren grounds north of Hudson Bay.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_024">
-<img src="images/i_024.jpg" width="600" height="415" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A ROUGH NIGHT IN THE GULF STREAM.</p></div>
-
-<p>On the other hand, the unfortunate coasts of Greenland are bathed in
-water chilled by months of captivity near the pole, and loaded with
-ice that cools down all the winds that blow ashore. Greenland itself
-is covered with an unbroken sheet of ice, hundreds or thousands of
-feet thick, yet most of it is no farther north than Sweden. The whole
-northeastern coast of America, down to Labrador, is incrusted with
-ice; and the region south of the St. Lawrence has a similar climate to
-Finland; while even farther south, Boston, within the protecting arm of
-Cape Cod, is in winter a city of frost and snow and fog from November
-till April, when it really is little farther north than sunny Naples,
-where one laughs at winter.</p>
-
-<p>Similarly, in the Pacific Ocean, the northward movement of the great
-Japanese current makes the coast of China habitable and pleasant clear
-to the Sea of Okhotsk, gives the Aleutian archipelago a pretty decent
-climate, and causes the islands and coasts of Alaska and British
-Columbia to nourish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span> the most magnificent forests in America, and to
-have a climate resembling that of Great Britain. Glasgow and Sitka
-are, in fact, in the same latitude, and under very similar climatic
-conditions, except that in Scotland there are no such lofty and cold
-mountains to precipitate constant rains as is the case along the
-northwestern margin of America.</p>
-
-<p>Similar examples and contrasts might be drawn in other parts of the
-world. The weather in the interior of continents is pretty much
-alike on similar latitudes the world round, varying with height; but
-the climate of all sea-coasts is good or bad as a place to live, in
-accordance with the temperature of the water which the currents bring
-to that part of the ocean.</p>
-
-<p>But the currents of the ocean influence something besides the weather.
-Upon them depends to a considerable extent whether a certain part of
-the coast shall have one or another kind of animals dwelling in the
-salt water. This is not so much true of fishes as it is of the mollusks
-or “shell-fish,” the worms that live in the mud of the tide-flats, the
-anemones, sea-urchins, starfish and little clinging people of the wet
-rocks, and of the jellyfishes, great and small, that swim about in the
-open sea.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing would injure most of these “small fry” more than a change in
-the water making it a few degrees colder or warmer than they were
-accustomed to. Since the constant circulation of the currents keeps
-the ocean water in all its parts almost precisely of the same density,
-and food seems about as likely to abound in one district as another,
-naturalists have concluded that it is temperature which decides the
-extent of coast or of sea-area where any one kind of invertebrate
-animal will be found. It thus happens that the life of Cuban waters is
-different from that of our Carolina coast; and that, again, largely
-separate from what you will see off New York; while Cape Cod seems to
-run out as a partition between the shore life south of it and a very
-different set of shells, sand-worms, and so forth, characteristic of
-the colder waters to the northward.</p>
-
-<p>Out in the ocean, however, the warm current of the Gulf Stream forms
-a genial pathway along which southern swimming animals, like the
-wondrously beautiful Portuguese-man-o’-war (Physalia), may wander
-northward for hundreds of miles beyond where they are found near shore;
-yet if by chance they stray outside the limits of the warm Gulf Stream,
-they will at once be chilled to death, as happened once to millions of
-tile-fish.</p>
-
-<p>Ocean currents carry floating burdens long distances. They bring the
-icebergs to form those terrible fogs of Alaska and Newfoundland; and
-they often bear far away the logs that float out of tropical rivers.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_026">
-<img src="images/i_026.jpg" width="600" height="489" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A YOUNG SHIP-RIGGER.</p></div>
-
-<p>These drifting logs often have plants growing upon them or contain
-quantities of seeds which are not injured by their short voyages.
-When,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span> therefore, the coral polyps build up one of their reef-islands
-until it appears above the waves, thither the currents bring roots
-and seeds from neighboring islands, and quickly plant them upon the
-new barren shores, so that in a few seasons the little islet becomes
-green and wooded and ready to hold its own against the winds and
-waves. Moreover, the same drifting stuff will carry land animals
-as passengers,—insects, snails of many kinds, reptiles, and even
-four-footed beasts,—and so not only give the island a vegetation, but
-populate it with various of the smaller animals. This seems to you,
-perhaps, a very accidental and haphazard way of fitting out a country
-so that presently it may support human beings, nor is it the only
-means by which barren islands become productive; but it is important
-as far as it goes, and when we study into the distribution of plants
-and animals in an archipelago, we are pretty sure to find those of the
-same sort upon islands that lie in the same current—even to the human
-inhabitants.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">THE BUILDING AND RIGGING OF SHIPS</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_027.jpg" width="75" height="74" alt="ornate capital A" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">As</span> late as 1861 an exploring ship was visited by natives of Western
-Australia, riding simple rough logs. To smooth and sharpen the log’s
-end and then to hollow it out has been thought to be the first step
-taken by primitive man in his progress toward a boat; but I think the
-dugout probably came later, or at any rate no earlier, than the folding
-of bark into a trough and tying up the ends, as some savages are still
-content to do. In North America, where materials were favorable,
-this germ developed into the very highest type of canoe—the Algonkin
-birch-bark. It may have been an attempt to imitate the bark canoe in a
-more durable form which led to the laborious hollowing of dugouts; but
-here again, in regions where suitable trees grew, the art developed
-so highly as to produce the great sea-boats of the Papuans and our
-Northwest Coast Indians, carved from a single log, yet able to carry
-sixty or more persons and their luggage. Such boats as these, when
-provided with sails, are practically “ships,” and satisfy every need of
-their owners.</p>
-
-<p>Another root of naval architecture lies in the raft, which long ago
-reached a high degree of usefulness in the sea-going balsa of western
-South America. It is probable that the South Sea catamaran is a clever
-outgrowth of experience with a raft. In Polynesia it took the form of
-two great canoes, exactly equal, fastened close together and covered
-by a single central deck; and such are the seaworthiness and speed of
-these double boats, that the Polynesians voyage hundreds of miles in
-them.</p>
-
-<p>Similar in purpose—namely, to insure stability—are the various
-outriggers that at once characterize and distinguish among themselves
-the native craft of the South Seas. This device consists of a beam of
-the lightest obtainable wood, usually about half as long as the canoe,
-which rests upon the water parallel to and a few feet away from the
-side of the boat, and is connected with its gunwale by elastic rods or
-planks. Sometimes these are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span> covered, or partly covered, by a light
-platform, and there are many variations in form; but the idea in all
-cases is to keep the boat from overturning.</p>
-
-<p>In many parts of the world logs could be obtained large enough only for
-a narrow bottom or hollowed keel, and the remainder of the boat was
-built up of planks and pieces ingeniously pegged and knit together with
-treenails, ratan, and cords made of vegetable fibers that tightened
-when wet. The Madras surf-boats are a familiar example in civilized
-waters of boats made in this way which have great elasticity, and
-out of them have developed, without much change, the swift proas of
-the Malays, and the junks of China, Korea, and Japan. One device for
-stitching these boats firmly together was the leaving of ridges on the
-inner side of the planks or pieces, through holes in which they could
-be tied to each other and to the inner framework without making a hole
-reaching the outside. This system seems to have been earlier than the
-use of treenails.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_028">
-<img src="images/i_028.jpg" width="250" height="219" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">PROA, WITH OUTRIGGER.</p></div>
-
-<p>Of similar construction, apparently, were the boats of the Egyptians
-and other peoples about the eastern end of the Mediterranean and the
-Red Sea, which, as far back as three thousand years before Christ, at
-least, had reached the size and capabilities of true ships, making, as
-we shall presently see, extensive sea voyages. Pictures of them remain
-in the very ancient tombs, and show that the planking consisted of
-pieces about three feet square, which were laid on overlapping, like
-shingles on a roof, and fastened to the framework by wooden treenails.
-The Phenicians, and their pupils the Greeks and Romans, improved on
-these methods in various ways, at last substituting iron, copper, and
-bronze nails or bolts (which would not rust) for the wooden pegs of
-their ancestors.</p>
-
-<p>All of these boats and those of all western Europe (of which the best
-outside the Mediterranean were the vikings’ ships) differed in one
-essential point of construction from Oriental ships: instead of making
-the shell of the vessel, and fitting into it a framework of connected
-braces, as the Malays and Polynesians did (and yet do), they laid a
-keel, bending it up or setting into it stem- and stern-posts at the
-ends, and inserted along its sides curving upright timbers, well styled
-“ribs,” which swelled out amidships, and narrowed in forward and aft,
-making a skeleton of the shape the hull was intended to be. Finally,
-over and upon this well-braced framework were securely fastened the
-planks, which were narrow and ran lengthwise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span> in every case except
-that of the ancient Nile boats. The Scandinavian vikings developed a
-craft of their own, one of the most interesting of the ancient ships;
-and to these northern craftsmen is traceable the principal influence
-that has shaped British (and consequently American) ship-building and
-seamanship. This early Scandinavian boat was always made of oak, sharp
-at both ends, and rather shallow, the general form being much like that
-of a modern whaleboat, with a great rounding keel—if, indeed, this
-wonderful sea-craft may not be a lineal descendant of the viking ship.
-The hewn planks were attached to the keel and to the ribs (usually
-single, naturally bent V-shaped prongs of oak) in a most ingenious and
-serviceable manner, and they were always overlapping or clinker (<i>i.
-e.</i>, clencher) built. Several of these and other prehistoric boats have
-been found buried in peat-moss and in mounds in Germany, Denmark, and
-Scandinavia, and have been described by various writers.</p>
-
-<p>The motive power of all the early boats was found in human arms,
-wielding paddles or oars. It is said that the oldest forms of paddles
-of which we have any record among the Egyptian or Assyrian hieroglyphs
-show them to have been shaped somewhat like the arm and hand, and that
-similar paddles were to be seen a few decades ago on the canals in
-Holland. This is natural, because undoubtedly the first paddle ever
-used was the naked hand. Short paddles were soon found less powerful
-than long ones; but in order to work the latter it was necessary to
-brace them against something in the middle. Notches were therefore cut
-in the edge of the boat, or thole-pins were inserted, the paddle became
-an oar, and by and by boatmen learned the art of feathering, and so
-forth.</p>
-
-<p>Steering could be done of old, as now, with a turn of the rearmost
-paddle in a canoe, and as canoes enlarged, the steering-paddle was
-lengthened. As the sterns of the ancient boats were usually either
-sharp, like the prows, or else built up into an ornamental height, the
-most convenient place for the steering-oar was over the right side,
-where it was balanced in a loop of cable, or otherwise, as close to the
-after end of the boat as practicable, and then a cross-piece extended
-inboard from the handle, enabling the steersman to move it more easily
-by giving him the benefit of leverage. Such was the arrangement of
-steering-gear in all the ancient Mediterranean boats, and it is to a
-similar arrangement in the sea-going craft of our northern ancestors
-that we owe our words <i>stern</i> and <i>starboard</i>, which originally
-meant “steering-place” and “steering-side.” The modern rudder is
-substantially the same oar, set upright, tiller and all, and hinged to
-the stern-post; in fact, the word has descended from the old Teutonic
-name for “oar,” and all gradations between steering-oar and true rudder
-may still be found.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Though some romantic stories are told by the old mythologists as
-to its origin, the idea of rigging was as natural and practical in
-its development as that of hull or steering-gear. That a strong
-breeze moves a canoe, and that, if a man in a canoe holds his robe
-outstretched or a thick bush upright, the force will send him along
-without the labor of paddling, and lengthwise rather than sidewise,
-because that is the direction of least resistance, were facts quickly
-and gratefully seized upon by the earliest boatmen. To have a skin
-ready for the purpose, and to set up a pole and ropes to hold it in
-position, were easy matters; yet in this simple arrangement you have
-the first sail.</p>
-
-<p>But skins were too heavy and valuable for such a purpose, except in
-such limited circumstances as those of the Arctic Eskimos.</p>
-
-<p>Persons who spent much time on the water, therefore, like the most
-ancient Egyptians and the islanders of the Chinese and South seas, soon
-devised a way of weaving rushes or splints of bamboo into broad mats,
-and thus were able, on account of their lightness, to carry much larger
-and more effective sails, which were kept outstretched by one or more
-cross-poles or spars, and could be taken down quickly. Many such sails
-are in use to this day not only among Asiatic and African boatmen, but
-on the northwest coast of Canada. A fine example hangs above my desk as
-I write.</p>
-
-<p>With the discovery of how to make cloth and cordage of woolen, silken,
-hempen, and cotton fibers (and in Egypt of papyrus), came a still
-better material for ropes and sails, since cloth was so much lighter
-that a far greater extent of it could be spread than before; its
-flexibility enabled it to be handled, changed, and rolled up snugly,
-and its cheapness encouraged its use and the practice of navigation
-generally. We read of silken sails on the royal barges of medieval
-times, but they could hardly have exceeded in strength or elegance
-those of the fine Phenician ships that carried the commerce of the
-world twenty-five centuries ago. “Fine linen with broidered work from
-Egypt was that which thou spreadest forth to be thy sail,” exclaims
-the sacred chronicler (Ezekiel xxvii. 7). Hempen cloth, indeed, was
-preferred for sails until the present century, as is expressed in our
-word <i>canvas</i>, which is derived from the Latin name of flax; but now
-cotton has mainly superseded it.</p>
-
-<p>Anciently the sails were often colored, purple or vermilion being the
-badge of a monarch or an admiral. Black denoted mourning. “In some
-cases the topsail seems to have been colored, while the sail below
-was plain; and frequently a patchwork of colors was produced by using
-different stuffs.” Various inscriptions and devices were also woven or
-painted on the sails, sometimes in gold. The Venetians and Greeks do
-the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span> to this day, adding a gaudy feature to the lovely Levantine
-sea-scenery; and the sails of the North Sea fishermen are turned to a
-rich red and yellow by the tanning mixture in which they soak their
-canvas.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_031">
-<img src="images/i_031.jpg" width="454" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">REEFING A TOPSAIL IN A STORM.</p></div>
-
-<p>As for the shape, all rigs seem reducible to two types—the lateen and
-the square. The former is characteristic of the eastern half of the
-world,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span> the latter of the western half, including primitive America,
-where, so far as I know, only plain, rectangular sails were ever made
-by the Indians.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_032">
-<img src="images/i_032.jpg" width="300" height="210" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A HONG-KONG “PULL-AWAY” BOAT.<br />
-
-<span class="smallest">Showing method of hoisting and reefing matting sails.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>There must be some good reason for a broad division like this, and
-it is found in the different conditions which eastern and western
-seamen had to meet. The lateen seems to have originated in the Indian
-Ocean, is seen wherever Arabs are, and has been taken eastward by the
-Malays as far into the South Sea Islands as their influence extended.
-It is a huge, triangular canvas extended at a steep angle by a long,
-flexible yard balanced across the mast to which it is loosely hung,
-and controlled by a sheet attached to the free corner. It is thus very
-lofty, and therefore suitable to a region of steady and usually light
-winds. This is the characteristic rig of the Arab dhow—a model that has
-come down from remote antiquity and is capable of excellent service on
-the northern and eastern coasts of Africa, where it prevails. It was
-probably in a small vessel of this kind that the Apostle Paul suffered
-shipwreck; and an outgrowth and perfection of it is the dahabiyeh
-of the Nile, now become famous as a tourists’ pleasure-boat, whose
-immensely lofty sail is precisely adapted to catch every faint breath
-that comes across the river from the deserts. Such sails are spread
-like the great pointed wings of an albatross over the narrow decks
-of the Malayan “flying proas” and other swift South Sea craft, and
-urge upon their fleet errands the xebecs, saics, feluccas, and other
-light craft of the Levant and Barbary coasts, identified with former
-piracy and modern smuggling, as well as with fishing and freighting.
-Some of these boats have two or three masts, the xebec and felucca
-being notable because of the curious forward rake of the foremast;
-and in that extremely picturesque Portuguese fishing-boat called the
-muleta there are, in addition to the big lateen, a huge free second
-sail ballooning out to leeward from the tip of the yard, and a host of
-little flying jibs forward, which somebody has well likened to a flock
-of birds hovering about the prow. Good examples of lateen-rigged boats
-may be seen in Louisiana, built and manned by the Greek, Maltese, and
-Sicilian fishermen.</p>
-
-<p>The difficulty of handling in rough or squally weather this long yard
-and expansive canvas makes it unsuitable for such weather as prevails
-in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span> the western Mediterranean or on the Atlantic; and to meet these
-stormy and frequently changing conditions, and obtain a rig with which
-they could beat to windward, the earliest rough-water seamen devised
-square sails. What the rig of the ancient far-voyaging Phenician ships
-was we have no means of knowing, but the indications are that they
-carried lug sails, which appear to be the simplest and earliest of the
-“square” forms; that is, sails suspended from short cross-yards, and
-controlled by ropes (sheets) attached to their lower corners. Such at
-least were the sails of the Roman and Greek merchant and war vessels of
-the classical era, and they persist to-day in the local fishing-smacks
-of the stormy Adriatic.</p>
-
-<p>The true home of the square-sailed craft, however, was northern Europe,
-where the Norwegian, Dutch, and Norman coasters and fishermen of to-day
-probably represent fairly well the rigs of the bold viking boats of
-twelve or fifteen centuries ago.</p>
-
-<p>Of the slow development of ship-building during the middle ages we have
-little information, but in the fourteenth century we begin to hear of a
-revival in the art, as, indeed, was needful when the long voyages were
-to be undertaken which the discovery of the mariner’s compass had then
-rendered possible. In this revival the Venetians and Genoese took the
-lead, but the English were not far behind. There was a large variety
-of vessels in that day, rude though they were, and called by names we
-should hardly recognize.</p>
-
-<p>Though the hulls of these vessels were large and tight, their shape
-was poorly adapted for speed or for safety in bad weather. Their decks
-were built up into immensely high structures at the stern and bows,
-after the old galley model, and to form forts for soldiers. Our word
-“forecastle” reminds us of this old usage. Their masts were single
-sticks,—not divided into topmasts,—and hence, necessarily, were thick
-and heavy; and they bore upon their summits large “top-castles” where
-marines stood in battle to shoot down upon the enemy’s decks. This
-weight above, with the height of surface exposed to the wind and the
-clumsy rigging, made it impossible for them to sail safely except with
-a fair and gentle wind (they never attempted it otherwise), and they
-were required to carry an enormous quantity of ballast. There was
-so little room for anything except armament, sleeping-berths, and a
-cooking-room in the war-ships that every war fleet had to take with it
-small vessels carrying provisions; and the case was little better in
-respect to merchant vessels.</p>
-
-<p>The ships in which Vasco da Gama, Columbus, the Cabots, and other
-explorers did their marvelous work were no better than this. Strangely
-inefficient they seem to us, and we wonder that some of the simplest
-contrivances in rigging were not adopted centuries before they came
-into use<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span> until we remember that it was not for long, speedy voyages
-that vessels were intended previous to the sixteenth century (with
-certain exceptions in northern seas), but simply as a means of carrying
-slowly from one coast-port to another a great number of men or huge
-cargoes.</p>
-
-<p>However, as the known world widened and trade grew, inventions by
-private ship-owners continually improved the rigging, though it would
-be hard to find a class of men slower to change old ways for new than
-the seamen. Columbus’s “caravel” had four short masts, the forward one
-having a square lug-sail and the three after masts lateens. It was
-very gradually, indeed, that lateens were given up, and most curious
-combinations of sails were to be seen in this transition period of the
-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The old-fashioned Mediterranean
-barca, for example, had as foremast the forward-raking “trinchetto”
-of the felucca, with a huge lateen, while the mainmast bore three
-square sails and the mizzen two lugs; and in addition to this two banks
-of oars were provided! In fact, it was not until 1800 that English
-frigates substituted a spanker for the lateen-rigged mizzen.</p>
-
-<p>Another curiosity of rigging possessed by these solidly built,
-beautifully carved vessels (no such exterior decoration has been seen
-since as adorned the ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)
-was the quaint little spritsail-topmast. By this time the single
-heavy pole-mast had been superseded by the three built-up masts and
-topmasts, braced by stays, made accessible by rope ladders (shrouds),
-and carrying several tiers of topsails instead of only one. A bowsprit
-had been added, also, and this became almost a fourth mast, so loaded
-were it and its stays with various small sails. Its outer end bore
-this miniature spritsail-mast, with topmast, shrouds, and tiny sails
-all complete, surmounted by a pole-head, or jack-staff, upon which was
-hoisted the flag since known as the jack, and always now carried at the
-prow of any national boat or ship, even such as the shapeless monitors.</p>
-
-<p>But gradually, out of the experience of long voyages, the competition
-of merchants, and as an effect of improved gunnery and consequent
-changes in naval tactics, the lofty deck-structures, great tops,
-needless outworks, and odd sails, like this spritsail, were got rid of,
-and vessels were trimmed down and equalized until they became, as now,
-“ship-shape, Bristol-fashion.”</p>
-
-<p>The rigging of modern sailing-vessels is divided into “standing” and
-“running”; the former includes the masts, their stays, now generally
-made of wire, and such other rope-work as is not adjustable.</p>
-
-<p>The sails, also, may be assigned to two classes: first, those attached
-to a mast, with or without boom and gaff, or to a stay, which are
-called fore-and-aft sails because they may be ranged lengthwise of the
-ship; and, second, those suspended by their upper and lower edges to or
-between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span> spars or “yards” swung across the mast, and known as “square”
-sails, the lowermost of which are really lugs. All the variations
-of shape seen in America, except the rare and local lateens, can be
-counted in one or the other of these classes.</p>
-
-<p>The styles of rig visible in American waters are not many, and are
-easily learned. Let us begin with the simplest—that having one mast.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_035">
-<img src="images/i_035.jpg" width="600" height="388" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">ANCIENT CARAVELS.<br />
-
-<span class="smallest">Copied from old manuscripts and tapestries.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>The <i>cat-boat</i> (<i>i. e.</i>, cat-rigged boat) is one having a simple
-pole-mast stepped very near the bow, and a fore-and-aft sail laced to a
-gaff and boom and managed by a sheet. This is the rig of the ordinary
-American sail-boat, which is noted for its ability in pointing up into
-the wind. In England it is known as a una-boat. Sometimes the peak
-of the sail is sustained by a little loose spar called a “sprit,”
-instead of a gaff. In the chapter on Yachting will be found further
-illustrations of these small rigs.</p>
-
-<p>A <i>sloop</i> has one mast (with topmast) set well back from the stem, and
-a bowsprit. The sloop-rig consists of a fore-and-aft mainsail, spread
-by means of a boom and gaff, a gaff-topsail, a forestaysail, and one
-or more jibs. A <i>cutter</i> is now substantially the same thing, though
-formerly somewhat distinguished. Both are derived, probably, from the
-northern lugger, and old-time pictures show queer intermediate forms,
-often having a square topsail instead of a gaff. Thus the earlier of
-the Hudson River<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span> sloops, which were not only the freight-carriers but
-the packet-boats between New York and Albany from the time the Dutch
-introduced them until steamboats took their place, had the top of the
-mainsail supported, lug-fashion, by a short yard, and carried above
-that a square topsail; but this rig was steadily modified toward the
-modern type to make it faster and safer in the sudden squalls that
-beset this hill-girt river.</p>
-
-<p>Of two-masted rigs, the oldest is the <i>brig</i>, which has square sails on
-both masts, just like the main and mizzen masts of a full-rigged ship.
-Then there is the <i>brigantine</i>, a slight modification of the brig,
-and the <i>hermaphrodite brig</i>, or <i>brig-schooner</i>, with fore-and-aft
-sails on the after mast. This kind of vessel has been greatly modified
-(one of its most extraordinary forms was the <i>ketch</i>), is less common
-now than formerly, and took its name, which is derived from the same
-source as “brigand,” from the fact that it was the most common rig of
-the pirates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its place was
-largely taken for small vessels by a purely American invention, and
-one of the greatest of Yankee notions—the <i>schooner</i>. The schooner
-was originally small, and had two masts; but now is often built of
-great size, with as many as five or six masts, each of which has a
-fore-and-aft rig—that is, a sloop’s mainsail and gaff-topsail on every
-mast, with forestaysail and several jibs in front, and staysails
-between. Sometimes a square sail is placed on the foretopmast, which
-makes the vessel a <i>topsail schooner</i>. The first one was built by a
-Gloucester sea-captain about 1817, and proved so satisfactory that all
-the fishing-fleet were soon rigged in that way, whence the idea has
-spread to all parts of the world.</p>
-
-<p>Until recently, however, vessels large enough to have three masts were
-always “square-rigged,” as <i>barks</i>, <i>barkentines</i>, or <i>ships</i>; for,
-although we have come to speak of any big vessel as a “ship,” yet in
-proper nautical language a ship is a vessel rigged in a particular way,
-and it is nothing else. In fact, in olden times they were sometimes
-very small—too small to be economical, as we now know. The “Naval
-Chronicle” for 1807 contained an account of a full-rigged ship of
-only thirty-six tons’ burden, which for one hundred and thirty years
-previous to that date had been cruising about the English coast, and
-may be doing so yet, for aught I know.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_037">
-<img src="images/i_037.jpg" width="600" height="394" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A FIJI ISLAND OUT-RIGGED CANOE, APPROACHING A
-FULL-RIGGED SHIP HOVE-TO.</p></div>
-
-<p>Masts have their proper names: the tallest is in the middle of the
-vessel, and is called the <i>mainmast</i>; the next tallest stands in front
-of it, and is the <i>foremast</i>; and the third is in the stern, and is
-named <i>mizzenmast</i>, because it carries the mizzen (sail). All the
-rigging, except that belonging to the bowsprit, is repeated for each
-mast, and each piece is named with reference to the mast or part of the
-mast or appropriate sail to which it belongs: as,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span> for example, main
-shrouds, fore shrouds, mizzen shrouds, mizzen-royal, maintopsail yard,
-foretopmast studdingsail downhaul, and so on. In a proper full-rigged
-ship all the sails upon the masts, except the spanker, are square,
-and are named from the sections of the mast opposite which they hang.
-Counting from the deck to the truck, or tiptop of the mast, they are
-as follows: on the mainmast, mainsail or maincourse, maintopsail,
-maintopgallant-sail, mainroyal, and skysail; on the foremast, foresail
-or forecourse, foretopsail, foretopgallant, foreroyal, and skysail;
-on the mizzenmast, cross-jack (and behind it the spanker, mizzen, or
-driver), mizzentopsail, mizzentopgallant, mizzen-royal, and skysail.
-The bowsprit sails are the forestaysail, foretopmast staysail, jib,
-flying jib, and outer jib, or jibstaysail. Each of the stays running
-diagonally from mast to mast bears a triangular sail known by the name
-of the particular stay on which it hangs, as maintopmast staysail, and
-so on—nine in all. In addition to all this, a little sail is sometimes
-set above the skysail, and another under the bowsprit, while out
-beyond the ends of the yards are often extended light additional spars
-carrying studdingsails. In favorable weather, when the captain wishes
-to “crowd all on,” as sometimes can be done for days and weeks together
-before the trades, almost forty sails may be spread, and the ship moves
-grandly along under a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span> swaying cloud of canvas that reaches far beyond
-her rails on each side, and towers more than one hundred feet into the
-steady air.</p>
-
-<p>But the cost of building, maintaining, and handling these grand
-fabrics is so great that they are steadily diminishing in numbers,
-and perhaps are destined before long to disappear altogether from the
-seas to which they have lent so much picturesqueness and romance. The
-supremacy of the schooner seems likely to prove complete. Unwilling to
-concede everything at once, many vessels are now rigged with square
-sails on the foremast and mainmast and fore-and-aft sails on the mizzen
-(a <i>bark</i>), or square sails on the foremast only, and the others
-schooner-rigged (a <i>barkentine</i>); but even these are disappearing in
-favor of the three-masted or four-masted schooner. This is due to the
-fact that the schooner rig will sail closer to the wind and gives
-as much force in proportion as the ship style, while it is far less
-expensive to build, and more quickly and easily managed, not requiring
-nearly as many men, and therefore being cheaper to run as well as
-to set up. It is for these reasons that I have called it one of the
-greatest of Yankee notions.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_038">
-<img src="images/i_038.jpg" width="600" height="475" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A MULETA, OR PORTUGUESE LATEEN-RIGGED FISHING-BOAT.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS</span></h2></div>
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_PREVIOUS">PART I—PREVIOUS TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA</h3>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_039.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="ornate capital W" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">Wherever</span> it may have been that man first appeared upon the earth, the
-period must certainly have been incalculably long ago, for he had time
-to spread to all parts of the habitable globe long before any sort of
-record begins. Little, if any, part of the world has yet been found
-where the evidences of man’s residence in the long-forgotten past do
-not exist. So long ago that all tradition of it is forgotten, and only
-the imperishable stone implements they used remain as traces of their
-presence, mankind had reached and settled the farthest northern and
-eastern coasts of Europe and Asia, and the southern extremities of
-Africa and India. These might have been reached by land; but similar
-traces exist in many islands which, so far as we can see, could never
-have been connected with each other or with any continent by lands
-now submerged (as perhaps has been the case in some other islands)
-since man originated. Such places, then, could have been reached and
-colonized only by means of boats, and that at an exceedingly remote
-time.</p>
-
-<p>Some hint of what these prehistoric navigators might have been able to
-do may be gathered from the performances that we know of in the South
-Sea, where almost every island and coral atoll that could support a
-colony has apparently been inhabited, since long before even tradition
-begins, although some of them, like the Hawaiian group, are separated
-from all others by hundreds of miles of open sea.</p>
-
-<p>It is exceedingly interesting and suggestive to read in a work like
-Professor Friedrich Ratzel’s “History of Mankind,” of the dispersion
-of population over the islands of the South Pacific Ocean, where a
-mixed population of black and yellow races possessed themselves of
-the whole of Oceanica long before white men had even heard of that
-part of the world. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span> astounding fact gains in significance when
-we remember that wide tracts of very deep ocean divide these islands,
-many of which are so small that they were found by exploring navigators
-only with difficulty. Cook and Beechey and other early voyagers note
-finding upon certain islands people who had come thither in their own
-boats over distances of six or eight hundred miles; and there are many
-instances of castaways surviving voyages of one thousand or fifteen
-hundred miles, even against the trade-winds. But these involuntary
-voyages were no longer than many others undertaken for war or trade,
-or because of famine or a mere love of wandering. Over-population of
-the limited spaces of most islands and groups led to the colonization
-of others; and it must often have been necessary to go far away to
-seek unoccupied or thinly peopled refuges. This could not have been
-done had men not been good shipwrights, not only, but careful students
-of the heavens by whose sun and moon and stars they steered, aiding
-themselves with charts made of sticks. The remotest groups, like the
-Sandwich Islands and Easter Island, were found and settled too long
-ago even for tradition to retain more than a fabulous story about it.
-“These Vikings of the Pacific,” says Ratzel, “continued to discover
-even small and remote islets. In the whole of the Pacific there is not
-one island of any size of which it was left to Europeans to demonstrate
-the habitability.” It has even been argued that the continent of
-America was peopled by Pacific Islanders, who made their way to it
-from Polynesia; but of this there is no direct evidence, and it seems
-unlikely, because the prevailing winds and currents flow from South
-America, rather than toward it, in this part of the Pacific.</p>
-
-<p>But leaving these dim old times when barbarous men voyaged far and wide
-over seas, and races mingled that were born on opposite sides of wide
-waters, let us note what traveling our civilized ancestors did.</p>
-
-<p>The evidences of ruined walls, graves, carvings, and stone tools
-show that that earliest of civilized races of which we now have any
-knowledge—the Hittites—were acquainted not only with the coasts of
-the Mediterranean Sea, but had boldly rounded the headlands of Spain,
-skirted the stormy Bay of Biscay, and settled colonies in England
-and France. Who were these Hittites? They were an Asiatic people,
-dwelling in the Taurus Mountains of the eastern part of Asia Minor,
-who increased into the most powerful nation of that part of the world
-about two thousand years before Christ, and carried on wars with the
-Egyptians, among others, until at last they were overcome by the rise
-of the empire of Assyria, north of them, about eleven hundred years
-before Christ. Doubtless they explored the African coast somewhat south
-of the Red Sea, and very likely knew the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span> Persian Gulf and the route
-to India. My own opinion is that we are likely to give the people of
-antiquity too little credit rather than too much in the direction of a
-knowledge of geography.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile there was rising along the Mediterranean from Palestine
-northward the most able commercial race of antiquity, who styled
-themselves Canaanites, as in the Bible, but whom the Greeks called
-Phenicians, the name by which we know them best. Their capitals were
-the cities Tyre and Sidon, the ruins of which are still to be seen
-on the Syrian coast a little way south of Beirut, and the wealth and
-commercial power of which will give us some interesting paragraphs
-for a future chapter. Suffice it here to say that their rulers were
-foremost among the loosely organized “nations” between the Nile and
-the Euphrates, and that they maintained their power through a long
-period, not only by their wealth and enterprise as traders, but mainly
-through their skill and energy as navigators. As we shall see when we
-come to consider their commerce in Chapter VII, they excelled in the
-building of ships, in an understanding of how to steer long courses
-by the heavenly bodies, and in sea knowledge generally. It is well
-known that the Phenicians traded in their ships down the west coast
-of Africa to and beyond the Canary Islands, which they also visited;
-made repeated voyages to the French coast and the British Islands; and
-may very likely have gone around into the Baltic, for they knew of
-its amber, though this might have been obtained by the overland trade
-routes. It is believed that they ascertained that Africa was, in fact,
-a huge island; for it was to prove this supposition that Pharaoh Necho
-(or Naku or Neku) II, an enlightened Egyptian monarch who reigned in
-the sixth century before Christ, hired a crew of Phenician seamen
-to man an expedition whose purpose it was to circumnavigate Africa.
-These men started down the Red Sea in 611 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>, and in 605
-<span class="smcap">B. C.</span> came sailing home through the Strait of Gibraltar,
-to the delight of their friends and confusion of a kingdom full of
-I-told-you-sos.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> Just twenty centuries elapsed before any one else
-repeated that feat, so far as I know;, and no wonder it was forgotten.
-This same Necho II did even more for maritime commerce, for he
-attempted to complete the canal, begun long before his time, connecting
-the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, and seems to have made a passage
-along which barges and small boats might be towed, which remained open
-for many centuries,
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>
-and in part followed the line now covered by the Suez Canal. Earlier
-than that Darius, the Persian conqueror of Egypt, had dug a navigable
-canal from the Nile to the Red Sea; and this shows that there must have
-been large traffic in both seas at that time to justify such tasks.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_042">
-<img src="images/i_042.jpg" width="300" height="226" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">AN EARLY ROMAN BIREME.</p></div>
-
-<p>By this time the power and prosperity of Tyre and Sidon had declined,
-and Carthage, originally a colonial city, had become the most
-important center of Phenician influence; and from this port there
-sailed a century later (perhaps about 500 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>) an exploring
-expedition under a Carthaginian king named Hanno, intended to study
-and establish trade with the West African coast. It was a large and
-powerful fleet, said to number sixty galleys; and that women were
-taken as well as men shows that it was intended to form settlements
-at suitable points, as, indeed, was done. The account of it has been
-preserved in a short writing called the “Periplus,” by an ancient but
-unknown Greek; and this inscription is regarded by most scholars as
-entirely authentic, since all its details conform to modern knowledge,
-even though it is impossible to identify surely the various points
-mentioned. It tells us that the terminus of Hanno’s exploration was an
-island beyond a gulf called Noti Cornu, in which he found a company of
-hairy women, whom the interpreters called <i>gorillas</i>. It was in memory
-of this that the manlike apes which a few years ago were discovered on
-the west coast of Africa received the same name; but they are not known
-anywhere north of the Kamerun Mountains, while the farthest point any
-critic is willing to believe reached by Hanno is the Bight of Benin,
-some distance north of the Kameruns. It is easy to believe that the
-inquiring Carthaginians might have heard of these apes,—or perhaps of
-chimpanzees, now found as far north as the Gambia River,—and reported
-actually seeing them, in order to add glory to their name. At any rate,
-this expedition increased largely the ancient knowledge of the sea in
-that direction; and navigators now knew the shores of the Atlantic
-from the Gulf of Guinea to the North Sea; but there the knowledge
-of the world seems to have rested for more than a dozen centuries,
-principally, no doubt, because there seemed nothing beyond, either
-north or south, to invite the merchants who then, as ever since, have
-been the principal promoters of discovery. It is only within the past
-century that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span> voyages of discovery have been undertaken purely for the
-sake of the increase of knowledge. Previous to that the object was
-always either military conquest or the extension of trade.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_043">
-<img src="images/i_043.jpg" width="300" height="287" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SHIP OF PTOLEMY PHILOPATOR.<br />
-
-<span class="smallest">(About 240 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span> Banks of oars and lug-sails.)</span></p></div>
-
-<p>Attention was now turned to the eastern seas, overland routes to India
-and even to China having become well known both to conquering armies
-and to mercantile caravans. The coasts of Abyssinia, of Arabia, of the
-Persian Gulf, and of western India were settled by a semi-civilized
-people for a thousand, perhaps two thousand, years before the Christian
-era; but they were broken into many independent tribes; and their
-ships, if they had any, only crept from one harbor to another near
-by, and neither knew nor cared what lay beyond the farther headlands.
-As time went on, however, and strong kingdoms arose in Egypt, Arabia,
-Syria, and Persia, consolidating these scattered tribes into nations,
-it became necessary to learn the sea-routes between more distant ports.
-Thus it came about that while the Pharaohs still flourished, Arabic
-commerce extended regularly along the coast of Abyssinia, and doubtless
-as far southward as Zanzibar, while the Malays had probably already
-reached and colonized Madagascar. There seems no reason to doubt that
-those remarkable ruins in stone which the late Mr. Thomas Bent has
-studied at and near Zimbabwe, in Mashonaland, East Africa, are the work
-of Arabian gold-miners, made perhaps a thousand or more years ago; and
-it is pretty certain that Arabic seamen even at that date regularly
-traded as far as the island of Madagascar.</p>
-
-<p>The Persian Gulf has been another nursery of a seafaring people since
-long before the record of history begins; yet so slow were they
-to learn of anything outside their capes, that it was accounted a
-wonderful thing when, in the winter of 325-4 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>, Nearchus,
-the admiral of the fleet of Alexander the Great, voyaged from the mouth
-of the Indus to the head of the Persian Gulf. Soon afterward, however,
-under the house of the Ptolemies, rulers of Egypt, fleets sailed
-regularly between Red Sea ports and India and Ceylon.</p>
-
-<p>But now for many long centuries the boundaries of the known world
-were not to be much enlarged (although methods of navigation were
-improved and commerce continued within the limits of Roman and Arabic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>
-dominion), for we know of the discovery of no new coasts until we
-begin to hear of the doings of an independent and far northern people,
-scarcely known to the civilized world, and certainly not regarded as a
-part of it.</p>
-
-<p>On the bleak shores of the North Sea, where the fiords and creek-mouths
-of Scandinavia gave shelter not only from foreign enemies, but from
-each other, there had grown up a seafaring race of men, of Gothic
-ancestry, who had settled on the coasts of what are now Norway, Sweden,
-and Denmark. They styled themselves Norsemen, or men of the North, and
-did not object to the title Vikings, or Fiord-men; but their enemies
-called them pirates, and with much reason, for they ravaged and ruled
-all the coasts both north and south of the Baltic, voyaging northward
-to the “land of the midnight sun,” colonizing northern France in the
-tenth century, and taking practical possession of all they pleased of
-the British Isles—Ireland and northern Scotland in particular. Here
-these Norsemen met equally fierce foes, or found congenial partners,
-as the case might be, in the Scottish and Irish seamen of that day,
-who were themselves bold freebooters and wide voyagers; and when, in
-the middle of the ninth century, the Northmen had discovered, as they
-supposed, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, a little exploration soon
-showed them that the Irish <i>culdees</i>, or priests of the Christian
-church planted in Ireland by St. Patrick, had been there before
-them—first in 725, according to the Irish chronicles of Dicuilus, who
-seems worthy of credence. Indeed, it is believed by some antiquarians
-that these Irish sea-wanderers had colonized Iceland at the same early
-age; had reached Newfoundland, and regularly resorted to its banks
-for fishing and whaling (five hundred years before Cabot); and were
-even acquainted with the coast of the North American continent, where
-traditions assert that their colonies were planted on what are now the
-shores of Virginia and the Carolinas, which they called New Ireland.</p>
-
-<p>These are entertaining old stories, and may have some truth in them,
-for it seems certain that the Irish reached Iceland, at least, in the
-eighth century. Icelandic history, however, begins with the visits
-of Norsemen in 850, followed by others, who, a few years later, took
-colonies there and set up an island population which before a century
-had elapsed numbered more than fifty thousand people. They had a
-republican form of government, and were quite independent of the King
-of Norway (Harold the Fair-haired, great-great-grandfather of William
-the Conqueror), from whom the earlier colonists had fled because of his
-oppression; but they kept up acquaintance with the mother-country, and
-merchants and adventurers were continually voyaging between Iceland
-and all the islands and coasts of that region, using stanch vessels
-sometimes one hundred feet in length, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span> eminently seaworthy; yet
-their only guides were the stars and such signs as seafaring men read
-in the water and weather about them.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_045">
-<img src="images/i_045.jpg" width="600" height="392" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A WAR EXPEDITION OF THE VIKINGS.<br />
-<span class="smallest">Showing build, steering-oar, and rig
-(colored lug-sail), of Scandinavian exploring ships in the North
-Atlantic.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>It continually happened, however, that they were driven far out of
-their courses, in such a region of gales, currents, and fogs as is the
-North Atlantic. In one such adventure, in the year 876, a sea-captain
-named Gunnbj&ouml;rn Ulfkragesson was driven far to the west of Iceland,
-and when he got back to port told his friends that he had seen land.
-Probably he also told them that so far as he could see there was nothing but icy mountains, of
-which they already had enough, for no one seems to have investigated
-the matter further until more than a century later, when a turbulent
-viking of the rebellious house of Erik, called Erik the Red, was
-banished from Norway and fled to Iceland with his followers. He was
-soon convicted there also of manslaughter in a neighborhood quarrel,
-and again condemned to banishment. Iceland wanted to get rid of him and
-his brawlers, and Europe would not let him return. Whither should he go?</p>
-
-<p>Then his thoughts turned toward the strange land in the west that
-tradition said Gunnbj&ouml;rn had sighted. It is believed by the most
-careful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span> students that Gunnbj&ouml;rn’s “rocks” were volcanic islets, which
-have now disappeared, and are represented only by certain shoals;
-but it would not be incredible that he had caught a glimpse of the
-Greenland coast itself.</p>
-
-<p>At any rate, Erik had little hesitation in starting out to rediscover
-them. Why should he? Those rough-riders of the sea were used to voyages
-of equal length. It is about 200 miles from the Norwegian coast at
-Bergen to the Shetland Islands; 200 miles from the Shetlands, or 225
-from the Hebrides, to the Faroes; and 275 miles thence to the nearest
-coast of Iceland,—reckoning all in straight lines, shorter than any
-ship could actually follow.</p>
-
-<p>If his viking boat and viking crew could span those stretches of sea
-unguided, what hindered his crossing the little further space whose
-tempests had no terrors for this wild sea-king? In that unpossessed
-land, could he find it, he might be free to riot at his will (but one
-cannot help thinking there was more in the man than that!); and if he
-could open to his people a new country, what wealth and power might not
-come with it to him, for the humbling of his rivals at the court of
-Norway.</p>
-
-<p>So Red Erik sailed away to the west in 984, and two years later
-returned to Iceland and reported that he had met first a far-extending
-icy coast, along whose front he had sailed southward until he could
-turn to the west and then northward, thus rounding its narrow southern
-extremity (Cape Farewell); and there he had found a habitable region,
-which he called Greenland, in order, as he said, to attract settlers
-by a pleasant name. Thus this wicked old Norseman was the first of
-American “real-estate boomers.”</p>
-
-<p>Attracted by his story, a band of adventurers went back with him in
-986, and established a settlement near the site of the present Danish
-town Julianshaab, just inside the cape, on an inlet that they named
-Eriksfiord.</p>
-
-<p>Among these emigrants was one named Herjulf, whose son Bjarne<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> was a
-merchant captain who owned his own ship, and was then absent in Norway.
-Returning to Iceland shortly after Erik’s departure, he concluded at
-once to follow his father, and, with a willing crew and still loaded
-ship, set sail for the west. But incessant bad weather drove them they
-knew not whither during many days. At last the wind fell, the sun shone
-out, and they saw land; but its appearance did not agree with the
-description of Greenland, and knowing they were too far south, Bjarne
-turned north, and kept on, occasionally sighting the coast, until
-finally he reached Eriksfiord in safety. No one knows what headlands
-he looked upon; but if the Icelandic versified chronicles called sagas
-may be believed,—and the wisest students of history put faith in
-them,—he was the first European to see America of whom we have definite
-knowledge.</p>
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p>
-<p>Several years passed by, however, before any one tried to profit by
-this accident and seek the lands that had been seen southward. Then
-Leif, the eldest son of old Red Erik, resolved to do so. He had talked
-with Bjarne and his men until he knew all the details of their story,
-and then he bought the same good old ship, and enlisted a crew of
-thirty-five men. This happened in Norway, where Leif then was, and it
-is said by some that the king aided and authorized the expedition. At
-any rate, after a public farewell they sailed away, and seem to have
-gone straight across the ocean; but whether they did this, or sailed
-by way of Iceland and Greenland, they easily found the unknown coasts
-Bjarne had described, and landed in Helluland, Markland, and Vinland,
-in the last of which they built huts and spent the winter of the year
-1000.</p>
-
-<p>The identification of these places has caused much discussion. That
-“Helluland” was Newfoundland and “Markland” Nova Scotia seems tolerably
-certain; but historians are not agreed as to where that winter was
-spent in “Vinland,” so called (meaning “Wineland”) because a German
-member of the crew gathered grapes there, from which wine could be
-made. When, in 1602, Gosnold discovered a fruitful island south of Cape
-Cod, he named it Martha’s Vineyard, believing that he had found the
-place.</p>
-
-<p>When Leif reached Greenland again, the next spring, every one was
-vastly interested in his discoveries, and emigrants from Greenland,
-Iceland, and even from Europe went out to colonize the new lands; but
-the attempts, though spasmodically continued for a long time, seem
-never to have been really successful, so that no undisputed trace of
-the presence of these sea-wanderers on the mainland of North America
-is known to exist. That they knew the coast fairly well from Disco
-Island (70&deg; N. lat.) southward to Virginia, is generally believed;
-but where Leif Erikson spent that first winter, or where the Vinland
-settlement of subsequent times was, is thus far a matter of conjecture.
-Some students of the sagas place it in New York harbor, others in
-Narragansett or Buzzard’s bay, near Boston, or in Nova Scotia. Formerly
-the general belief was that Newport, R. I., or the shore above there,
-was surely the site; but this was based, first, on the supposed
-European inscriptions on a rock in the Somerset River, at Dighton,
-just above Fall River, which were in reality only Indian markings;
-and, second, upon the “old round tower” at Newport, which few persons
-now believe was built prior to the coming of the English colonists
-with Roger Williams. The late Professor E. H. Horsford believed that
-he had found the site of the principal Norse settlement of the tenth
-century, called Norumbega, at Watertown, on the Charles River, a few
-miles west of Boston; and he made an argument from old maps, etc., to
-support his assertion that the ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span> river-walls, etc., there were
-really the remains of a town; but historians generally do not attach
-any importance to Professor Horsford’s theory.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps we shall never know where this “Vinland” was that Leif
-discovered, and where the queenly Gudrid dwelt and her son Schnorr—the
-first white child in America—was born; nor is it of much consequence
-that we should, for the settlements were few and transitory. That they
-existed, however, and that the shores of Canada and New England were
-occasionally visited from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries by
-Norsemen, cannot be gainsaid. That the Greenlanders did not all migrate
-to the warmer, well-timbered, and fruitful region in the south was
-probably due to the fact that it was so remote from their kindred, and
-so open to attack by the native red men, whom they called <i>skrellings</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_048">
-<img src="images/i_048.jpg" width="150" height="242" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A VIKING GALLEY.</p></div>
-
-<p>Over the long but slow history of these American settlements of
-the Northmen we need not linger. Although Vinland seems to have
-been abandoned within a few decades, the Greenland settlements were
-maintained. A republican government was organized; Christianity was
-introduced, and remains of their stone churches and Augustinian
-monasteries have been identified. By the end of the fifteenth century,
-however, these colonies had completely disappeared, worn out in
-the hopeless struggle against climate and the savage Eskimos, but
-exterminated, at last, perhaps, by the Black Death—for the great plague
-which almost depopulated Europe in the fourteenth century seems to have
-reached even the desolate shores of Greenland, and to have consumed the
-last of these remote people, causing them to be utterly forgotten.</p>
-
-<p>A more definite account of pre-Columbian North America than that of
-the sagas and other traditions of the Vinlanders, and one accepted as
-true by Mr. Major of the English Hakluyt Society and other competent
-geographical critics, is that of the voyages and reports of the
-brothers Nicol&ograve; and Antonio Zeno. These men belonged to a family
-distinguished in Venice; and toward the close of the fourteenth century
-they separately or together made many voyages in the North Atlantic,
-going far beyond any previous navigators of which they knew. They wrote
-letters home containing an account of these, but little publication was
-given to them, and they were forgotten until the revival of interest in
-geography following the early discoveries of Columbus. The documents
-possessed by the Zeno family were then made the basis of a pamphlet
-by a grand-nephew reciting what his ancestor had done, long before
-the time of Columbus. The most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span> interesting thing in it is an account
-of how, about 1390, Nicol&ograve; Zeno fitted out a ship at the Faroes, went
-over to Greenland and there learned of an island which was called
-Estotiland, and which we know as Newfoundland. Not very far away to the
-southwest of it, he says, was the country of Drogeo, which fishermen
-whom he saw had visited. They claimed to have “discovered” none of
-these places, but spoke of them as formerly well known, although then
-little frequented by Europeans.</p>
-
-<p>As to Drogeo,—which he speaks of as if it were the mainland,—that
-was still occasionally resorted to for fishing; and he relates the
-adventures of a white man who had been captured by the mainland savages
-a few years previously, and adopted by them on account of his knowledge
-of how to fish with a net, and to do other useful things. Such a
-course would be very characteristic of the aborigines of eastern North
-America, as we have since learned to know; and it is also natural that
-he should have been fought for by rival chiefs, as Zeno says happened
-to this man, who, by capture and exchange, or of his own motion,
-traveled about and saw much of the people of this “country” Drogeo. At
-any rate, the information given by Zeno tallies remarkably well with
-the truth about primitive North America and its inhabitants. “They have
-no kind of metal,” reported this wandering refugee, who finally drifted
-back to the coast, and was able to make his escape to a fishing-boat.
-Now the one really remarkable and distinctive fact about the North
-Americans was just this,—that with a considerable advance in other
-directions, they had never learned to fuse and forge or otherwise
-utilize iron or other metals, save a little metallic copper and silver
-in the Great Lakes region. But listen to the rest of his brief report:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>They live by hunting, and carry lances of wood sharpened at the
-point. They have bows, the strings of which are made of beasts’
-skins. They are very fierce, and have deadly fights amongst each
-other, and eat one another’s flesh [as was true, to a limited
-ceremonial extent, after battles]. They have chieftains and certain
-laws among themselves, but differing in the different tribes. The
-farther you go southwestward, however, the more refinement you meet
-with, because the climate is more temperate, and, accordingly, there
-[<i>i. e.</i>, in Mexico] they have cities and temples dedicated to their
-idols, in which they sacrifice men and afterwards eat them. In those
-parts they have some knowledge of gold and silver.</p></div>
-
-<p>Now, whether all this was the observation of a single rude sailor,
-or, as is more likely, summarizes what Zeno was able to learn from
-all sources at his command regarding the new western mainland and its
-people, it is correct and forcible. Had young Nicol&ograve; the editor, a
-century afterward, tried to invent something of the kind, he would
-surely have made his invention marvelous, for that was an age of fable
-and bombast. On the contrary,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span> this is a simple and accurate statement
-of what we now know were the facts. Nor did he have any means of
-knowing anything more of the case than his family archives revealed,
-since he wrote and published this account of his uncle’s voyages only a
-few years after the first return of Columbus, and before any writer had
-visited the northern American coasts, or had learned the habits of the
-natives. I can but believe, therefore, that the report was made in good
-faith, and records simply what the Zeni did and saw and heard; and that
-these bold Venetian navigators knew more about North America, at least,
-before the end of the fourteenth century than Columbus had learned by
-the end of the fifteenth.</p>
-
-<p>I have run ahead of my story, but I wanted to show how little
-impression these northern investigations and occupation of a new
-continent had made upon the Mediterranean “world,” which seems rarely
-to have heard of them, much less to have profited by the information,
-for more than four hundred years, in spite of the fact that there was
-constant communication between the Normans and British, at least, and
-the Mediterranean peoples.</p>
-
-<p>Let us now go back to those southern countries and see what they had
-been doing toward maritime exploration during these thousand years
-and more when the Scandinavians were so busy in the north. It was
-principally perfecting the knowledge of the world their fathers knew.
-From the very first men had tried to make maps, and succeeded fairly
-well for small spaces; but to make a map of the whole world was a task
-that defied human knowledge for many centuries. After Aristotle’s time
-all men of education understood that the world was a sphere; and about
-150 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span> Hipparchus, borrowing an idea from the Babylonians,
-taught the Greeks that the way to place their towns and mountains and
-rivers and the outlines of the coast correctly upon a model of the
-world, was to determine their position by observations of the heavenly
-bodies. Thus the ideas of latitude and longitude originated. He could
-not apply his method practically very far, because there were few or
-no accurate astronomical observations away from a few cities in Egypt
-and Greece; but two hundred and fifty years later Ptolemy, a learned
-mathematician of Alexandria, gathered all the facts obtainable, and
-made an attempt which bore a rude resemblance to the truth and served
-as the best and almost the only account of the world for several
-hundred years. Ptolemy flourished about 150 <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> His book
-describes Asia as far east as the Malayan peninsula, Africa south to
-Zanzibar and the Gulf of Guinea, and shows a knowledge of Europe as far
-north as the Shetland Islands (Ultima Thule) and Denmark; the original
-work seems to have contained no maps, but these were added to it about
-500 <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> by another mathematician named Agathod&aelig;mon. It is
-called the Almagest.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Nothing of value was added to this during the long stagnant period of
-the world called the middle ages, when the love of learning declined
-and men fell back into the old traditions, even to the extent of being
-taught by their priests that it was a sin to believe that the world
-was round. In those times the Arabs of Bagdad nourished knowledge more
-than any one else, but even they did little for geography. Finally the
-people of Europe began to wake up and look at things for themselves,
-instead of tamely accepting whatever the Pope of Rome or somebody else
-told them, and going and coming as he directed, regardless of whether
-it was for their interest to do so or not. One of the first and one of
-the most important influences of this revival in a desire for learning
-and the means for larger activity among men was the sudden extension of
-navigation; and this could not have come about, nor amounted to much,
-had the mariner’s compass not been invented.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_051">
-<img src="images/i_051.jpg" width="600" height="344" alt="" />
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="line">“Off, thou Norseland Terror, clouding</div>
-<div class="i1">Hellas with the jealous wraith</div>
-<div class="line">Which, the gods of old enshrouding,</div>
-<div class="i1">Froze their hearts, the poet saith!”</div>
-</div></div></div></div>
-
-<p>Nothing is more obscure than the history of this instrument. The
-Chinese have certainly known, from a remote antiquity, that a
-magnetized needle, permitted to move freely, would turn north and
-south; but they seem to have profited as little by it as by so many
-other useful things that, long afterward, in the hands of the more
-energetic men of the West, contributed so largely to the progress of
-civilization. They were accustomed to poise a sliver of magnetized
-steel upon a bit of cork and set it afloat in a bowl of water. One end
-was marked, but this, with characteristic Chinese perversity,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span> was the
-one pointing toward the south, not toward the north, as with us. This
-rude and simple arrangement is still in use among the Koreans—or was
-until recently. With such a contrivance and little, it any, knowledge
-of the variation of the needle, the Chinese of a thousand years ago
-made longer voyages than they have done in more modern times, trading
-not only with India, but sailing regularly as early at least as the
-ninth century to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.</p>
-
-<p>There is no direct evidence, but it seems incontestable, that it was
-from these eastern mariners that the Arabs received the compass, and
-gradually brought it into use in their home waters, where it became
-well known to the crusaders and other sea-going travelers of the middle
-ages. Little reliance could be placed upon it, however, until the
-sixteenth century, when the need for something trustworthy for long
-voyages made men turn their attention to the study and betterment of it.</p>
-
-<p>Toward the end of the fourteenth century, as I have said, Europe was
-beginning to recover from the terrible visitations of the plague, and
-to wake from its lethargy and to look abroad; and various influences
-were at work to promote exploration by sea and land—and what a grand
-field for study there was!</p>
-
-<p>At this time nearly all the commerce of Europe, mainly in Italian
-hands, was with India and China. The overland route was long, perilous,
-and expensive, and that across the Arabian Gulf hardly less so. At
-best, such traffic was slow and limited, and the first need of the
-reviving world was the discovery of some straighter and quicker road
-to the East. In this quest Portugal came forward under the brilliant
-leadership of Dom Henrique (Prince Henry), styled “the Navigator,” who
-was the younger son of King Jo&atilde;o (or John) I, and half an Englishman,
-since his mother was Philippa of Lancaster. It was Prince Henry’s
-ambition to extend geographical discovery and improve seamanship, and
-he enlisted the help of the best navigators obtainable, regardless of
-nationality. In order to observe the heavens to better advantage, and
-also to study the tides and other nautical phenomena, he established an
-observatory on the bleak headland of Cape Sagres, where he willingly
-spent a large portion of his time for the sake of science. Navigation
-was sorely in need of such help. Except that they had rude compasses,
-of whose laws of variation, etc., they were ignorant, the seamen
-of that day were little, if any, better equipped than were those
-who sailed the “ships of Tarshish” a thousand years before that.
-Astronomers had supplied them with rough tables of the declination of
-the sun, pole-star, etc., by which, with the help of a cross-staff,—a
-simple instrument for ascertaining angles,—they might make a guess at
-the latitude.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span> Longitude was found only by observations of eclipses of
-the moon, and noting the difference between the time when it was due
-at home, according to the almanac, and the local time of its actual
-coming; but at sea the “observations” were little better than guessing.</p>
-
-<p>Chart-making was an important branch of study at Sagres. So few and
-rare were sea-maps then that one was never seen in England until 1489.
-To the collection of information in this direction, and the improvement
-of nautical methods, Prince Henry and his aids applied themselves most
-diligently; but he died before much had been accomplished. Nautical
-studies went on, however, under the next king, John II, for whom Martin
-of Bohemia, the foremost astronomer of his time, devised a form of the
-astrolabe for use on shipboard, increasing accuracy in finding latitude.</p>
-
-<p>It was with no better instruments than these (and sand-glasses in
-place of chronometers) as guides over chartless and unsounded seas
-that the way was found to India and to America, and the globe was
-circumnavigated; and that the same thing might be done again is shown
-by the fact that only last year (1897) a vessel, which had barely
-escaped destruction in a storm and lost all her instruments in the
-mid-Pacific, was brought safely into San Francisco by observation of
-the stars and “dead-reckoning” alone.</p>
-
-<p>But Prince Henry (for I have run ahead of my story again) was not
-content to study and teach on land alone. He was fired with the ardor
-of discovery and conquest likely to augment Portugal’s wealth and
-influence in the East. Expedition after expedition was sent southward,
-and in 1435 Henry’s ships finally passed Cape Bojador. Great was the
-wonder and rejoicing thereat, for it had always been taught by the
-monks that this cape was the end of the earth; but it was not until
-1462 that the Cape Verd Islands and Sierra Leone were reached. Prince
-Henry had been dead since 1460, but the influence of his wise and
-untiring enthusiasm and work lived on, and inspired the king and people
-of Portugal to renewed efforts at solving that riddle of Africa that
-perhaps the Egyptian sphinx was meant to typify. By 1469 trade had been
-opened with the Gold Coast, and a few years later the mouth of the
-Congo was found.</p>
-
-<p>These advances showed that there was nothing unnatural or fearful in
-the southern latitudes, as sailors had been taught to believe from
-time immemorial,—a superstitious dread which the old chart-makers long
-sustained by their habit of filling the empty sea-spaces on their maps
-with fearsome and wondrous monsters,—and therefore, in 1486, King John
-II sent Bartholomew Dias in two sail-boats—pinnaces of fifty tons
-each—with orders to go as far as he could; and this bold captain,
-passing the last known headland of the Guinea coast, sailed on and on,
-tracing the West<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span> African coast, and landing here and there to examine
-the swampy shores, to get fresh water, and to hoist the castellated
-banner of Portugal in token of possession before the wondering eyes of
-naked negroes. At length he was blown and buffeted for days and days in
-heavy storms, and at their close found himself far to the eastward of
-his former longitude, whereupon he fought his way on and sighted land
-which he rightly determined must be the southern extremity of Africa.
-This was in 1487. Returning to Lisbon toward Christmas of that year, he
-reported his experiences, and dwelling especially upon the rough time
-he had had in the south, proposed to style the point of the continent
-Cape of all the Storms; but King John, foreseeing great things to
-follow for his country, said, “No; we will call it the Cape of Good
-Hope”; and so it remains to this day—but all the storms remain about
-it, too!</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_054">
-<img src="images/i_054.jpg" width="600" height="302" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">PORTION OF A FIFTEENTH CENTURY SEA-CHART, BY TOSCANELLI.<br />
-<span class="smallest">Copied by permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Co., from
-Justin Winsor’s “Narrative and Critical History of America.”</span></p></div>
-
-<p>Now for some years previous to this time the monarchs of western
-Europe were much exercised over rumors of the existence somewhere
-in the Orient of an all-powerful and generally marvelous potentate
-styled (by them) Prester John, and reputed to be a conqueror of
-Asiatic, or perhaps African, infidels who later had become cut off
-from Christendom. The whole affair was a myth, probably arising from
-an indistinct knowledge of Abyssinia, whose negus afterward borrowed
-the title; but before this was realized popes and various “Catholic
-majesties” had sent embassies in search of Prester John’s court, some
-of which incidentally gained valuable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span> information. Among the latter
-was Pedro Covilho, an emissary of Portugal, who, having failed to find
-Prester John in western India or Persia, made his way back to Egypt and
-Abyssinia, whence he sent home in 1486 or 1487 a report of progress
-that told John II some surprising news of the advancement of the Arabs
-of that part of the world in the sciences, and especially in those
-belonging to geography and navigation.</p>
-
-<p>Covilho’s messenger was a Portuguese Jew, Rabbi Joseph of Lamego, who
-carried voluminous letters, one of which showed that Arabic mariners
-were then familiar with the whole length of the east coast of Africa,
-including Madagascar, and were perfectly well aware where it terminated
-at the south, and that there was no obstacle to passing around to the
-western side of the continent; and just at this interesting juncture
-Dias came sailing back in his pinnace to say that it was all true, for
-he had seen it.</p>
-
-<p>Thus the sea-road was open to India and Cathay, and Portugal was eager
-to take advantage of it. She was then one of the leading powers of
-Europe, and the foremost one in colonial and commercial enterprise,
-striving to wrest from Genoa and Venice the supremacy in trade that
-they had so long enjoyed. Nevertheless almost ten years elapsed
-before the next expedition was sent southward to confirm Portugal’s
-possessions, and establish commerce with the Orient. John II had died,
-and Emmanuel the Fortunate reigned in his stead—a reign that has been
-called the heroic period of the nation’s history; and it must not be
-forgotten that “Little Portugal” was then so mighty that a year or so
-previously (May 4, 1493) the Pope (Alexander VI) had issued a bull in
-which he had divided, with intended equality, all undiscovered parts of
-the earth between Spain and Portugal, the former being given everything
-to the west, while to Portugal were reserved all future rights east of
-a certain north-and-south line.</p>
-
-<p>The line of separation designated was the meridian of no variation of
-the compass-needle. The existence of such a line had been discovered
-by the same Christopher Columbus who was to thrill the world a few
-years later; but he did not know, what only experience developed, that
-this meridian was changeable, swinging many degrees east and then
-returning west in the course of two or three centuries. At that time
-the line seemed fixed some three hundred miles west of the Azores, and
-philosophers accounted for it later by a theory that it lay in the
-middle of the Atlantic because there it was subject to an equality
-of attraction toward both continents which held it steady. This was
-not true, but it was better than the less learned but more popular
-explanation of the magnetism of the compass—namely, that it was “an
-effluvium from the root of the tail of the Little Bear.” A year later,
-however (June 7, 1494), the treaty of Tordesillas,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span> between Spain and
-Portugal, declared that the line of demarcation should be the meridian
-370 leagues west of the Cape Verd Islands, or as nearly as possible
-in the center of the Atlantic. The supposition that there might be
-valuable lands within, that is, east of, that limit, inspired several
-of Portugal’s subsequent searchers.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_056">
-<img src="images/i_056.jpg" width="600" height="338" alt="" />
-<p><span class="smallest sans">DRAWN BY HENRY B. SNELL.</span></p>
-<p class="caption">“THE SEA-ROAD TO INDIA AND CATHAY.”</p></div>
-
-<p>In 1497 King Emmanuel’s expedition was ready to sail—the largest and
-best equipped, probably, that had ever been sent out by any government,
-and its commander was Vasco da Gama, a young naval officer of renown.
-His fleet consisted of four vessels,—small caravels, of course, one
-of which was commanded by Dias,—and left the Tagus, after ceremonious
-farewells, in July. Da Gama stopped at various places, but reached
-and safely rounded the stormy cape in November. He had with him the
-information (and some say an Arabic map) sent home by Covilho, but his
-business was not to verify this, but to reach India and establish new
-Portuguese possessions. Why, then, did he not strike straight across
-from Cape Agulhas, as East Indiamen have done ever since? For the good
-reason that he had no guide, no means of finding his way across the
-southern ocean, where all the stars were strange; for sun observations
-for latitude were then unknown to European navigators, and rarely used
-on land. Instead of this, he was obliged to turn northward and skirt
-the coast for a thousand miles, stopping here and there, until he had
-passed far enough north of the equator to bring above the horizon the
-familiar home stars, for which he had “tables.”</p>
-
-<p>At last, from the Arab port of Melindi, near Mombasa, he turned east<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
-and sailed straight away to India, where he anchored before Calicut,
-then the most important port of southern India, on May 20. Returning
-the next year with ships richly laden, he was received with public
-rejoicings and given high honors; and he greatly astonished his
-friends of the navy by telling them that the Arabs used the compass,
-sea-charts, quadrants, and “had divers maritime mysteries not short of
-the Portugals.”</p>
-
-<p>Da Gama lived many years, and sailed often to India and China after
-that; but chiefly on political expeditions, in which he disgraced his
-otherwise great name by inexcusable rapine and cruelty.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile some exploration had been done toward the far north, as we
-shall see in the next chapter; and so the fifteenth century ended, with
-Europe understood as far as Nova Zembla, Africa circumnavigated, and
-the coasts of India, Malaya, southern China, and the larger Malayan
-islands fairly familiar to geographers. This is much, and yet it leaves
-unmentioned the greatest fact of all—the work of that grand, sad
-character, Christopher Columbus, upon whose grave near Seville has been
-written:</p>
-
-<p class="center">HE GAVE A NEW WORLD TO SPAIN.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_057">
-<img src="images/i_057.jpg" width="600" height="401" alt="" />
-<p><span class="smallest sans">ENGRAVED BY E. H. DEL’ORME.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="line">“There, beyond the Cape of Storms,</div>
-<div class="i1">Where the breaker’s voice of thunder</div>
-<div class="i1">Roars when ships are rent asunder,</div>
-<div class="line">Through a fog of ghostly forms</div></div>
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="line">“Men catch glimpses of the sail,</div>
-<div class="i1">Ages old, and rent and hoary,</div>
-<div class="i1">Of that quaint old ship of story,</div>
-<div class="line">And cry, ‘Vanderdecken, hail!’”</div>
-</div></div></div>
-</div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_058">
-<img src="images/i_058.jpg" width="397" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE ROCK IN THE SEA.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="center noindent"><span class="larger">CHAPTER IV</span><br />
-(<i>Continued</i>)<br />
-<br /><span class="large">EARLY VOYAGES AND EXPLORATIONS</span></p>
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_II_FROM_COLUMBUS">PART II—FROM COLUMBUS TO COOK</h3></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_059.jpg" width="75" height="80" alt="ornate capital W" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">Why</span> to Spain? It is an “oft-told tale,” and the merest reminder is all
-that is needed here. Columbus was a young seafaring man, born at Genoa
-about 1434, and ambitious to become a master of his profession, and
-especially to acquire great wealth. He traveled to Venice, Barcelona,
-and other cities where learning was to be gained, and became thoroughly
-acquainted with all the astronomical and geographical science of the
-time, and especially proficient in the art of cartography. Attracted by
-the naval activity in Portugal under that indefatigable Prince Henry,
-Columbus went to Lisbon about 1454, and endeavored to find a leading
-place in the sea-work that country was doing. But Portugal’s eyes were
-so blinded by the glamour of Africa and the East Indies that she had
-no time to follow the gaze of this young and ardent Genoese captain
-whose eyes were turned steadily toward the west, where, more and more
-insistently, he urged that a sea-track, straight as a line of latitude
-marked on a globe, lay open to the Indies and the coasts of Cathay. To
-prove this true would be not only a glorious exploit for any man, but
-an achievement of untold advantage to the nation under whose flag he
-sailed.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_060">
-<img src="images/i_060.jpg" width="287" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">PORTRAIT-STATUE OF COLUMBUS IN MADRID.</p></div>
-
-
-<p>Just how this conviction arose in the mind of Columbus we do not know.
-It was probably first a purely scientific conclusion from the facts of
-astronomy and geography that he had learned, encouraged by romantic
-traditions of western “Isles of the Blest.” A few scientific men agreed
-with him, but the great influence of the Church of Rome condemned such
-notions as opposed to the Bible and revealed religion; and the mass of
-the people, ignorant and superstitious, looked upon them as foolish,
-and laughed at Columbus as a
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
-dreamer or worse. Between his danger of arrest and death as a heretic
-on the one hand, and imprisonment as a lunatic on the other, the man
-of science in those days had a hard time. Columbus therefore sought
-far and wide for evidence to support his theories and render them
-acceptable. How much he learned—what, in the way of facts, he actually
-knew—it is hard to say. Having fallen in love with a Portuguese lady of
-good family, he married and apparently settled in Portugal as his home,
-but continued his voyaging. He knew the Mediterranean from end to end.
-He made several voyages to the Guinea coast, and dwelt for a time at El
-Mina, then newly founded, satisfying himself of the foolishness of the
-common assertion that men could not live “under the equinoctial”—that
-is, near the equator. He went north to and beyond Iceland, and
-acquainted himself with those waters, and thus convinced himself that
-the ocean was everywhere navigable, and subject to uniform laws of
-tides, weather, etc. His mind was cleared more and more of the mists of
-fable and superstition, and all he learned brought into clearer view
-the truth of science as a guide. He devoted more and more attention to
-improving the means of finding the true position of a vessel at sea,
-and of keeping a true course by the compass,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span> which he continually
-studied; and it was he who first discovered that some leagues west of
-the Azores lay the meridian of no variation—a meridian that has now
-moved eastward until it lies near London. Everywhere he interrogated
-explorers, discussed navigation with experienced captains, and sought
-the aid of new maps, improved instruments, and advancing knowledge; and
-yet mixed with all seem to have been a childlike vanity, credulity, and
-superstition, hard to reconcile with his courage and acumen.</p>
-
-<p>How much actual evidence he had of the existence of lands below the
-Atlantic horizon unknown to his countrymen can never probably be
-satisfactorily answered. The latest critical biographer of Columbus,
-the great Spanish liberal statesman Emilio Castelar, considers that
-he was led to his discoveries by little, if anything, outside of
-pure reasoning upon the rotundity of the earth and other scientific
-data, and dismisses as fables or things unknown to Columbus all
-the Scandinavian discoveries of Greenland and the rest, and other
-stories of men who, it is said, had already seen the transatlantic
-world he sought. We are told that he learned of woods and canes like
-none that grew in Africa, of strange carvings, and even of the dead
-bodies of men, resembling those of the far East, being cast upon the
-shores of Africa and the islands near it, especially the Azores. It
-seems impossible that when he was in Iceland and the other northern
-regions, a man of his inquiring mind should not have learned something
-of Greenland and the continental shores beyond, especially when one
-remembers that for centuries previous Catholic missionaries had been
-reporting progress to Rome from that distant but real field of labor.
-It is quite likely that some knowledge of these facts, which must
-have been known to the professors of the universities of Pavia and
-Barcelona, where Columbus studied, and to other intelligent men of
-Italy and Spain with whom he came in contact, had caused Columbus to go
-to the north, for we know of no other errand. Perhaps he had heard of
-the Zeni.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_061">
-<img src="images/i_061.jpg" width="250" height="209" alt="ships of columbus" />
-</div>
-
-<p>Especially to be noted is the allegation that Columbus possessed
-information as to the experience of a Frenchman named Jean Cousin,—a
-Dieppe sea-captain, who, it is asserted, discovered South America
-and the Amazon River in 1488. This claim has been lately reviewed
-(“Fortnightly Review,” January, 1894) by Captain Gambier of the British
-navy, and he decides that it is good; and that it was because Cousin’s
-first mate was one of the Pin&ccedil;ons that that firm was willing to assist
-Columbus, as a good investment.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Whatever he knew or did not know, and whatever may have been the
-difficulties in his way, Columbus spent many weary years in fruitless
-efforts to interest some government in his schemes. How finally he won
-Spain to his support, secured the aid of the Pin&ccedil;ons, merchant princes
-of Palos, and sailed from that port on August 3, 1492,—and it was
-Friday!—are details that need not be repeated. Equally well remembered
-are the story of his daring onward voyage, and of the glorious outcome
-when, on October 12, land was seen,—a new world found.</p>
-
-<p>Expedition after expedition followed one another from Spain to the
-newly found possessions, some conducted by the earlier companions of
-Columbus, and all filled with adventurers who cared for nothing but
-plunder. One of these, led by an officer named Ojeda, reached the coast
-of Guiana in 1499, and coasted along the north shore of South America
-as far, probably, as Maracaibo. This was the first of the Spanish
-expeditions actually to set foot upon the mainland; and it would
-not have been mentioned out of its place (since Cabot, as we shall
-presently see, had landed on the continent nearly two years before) but
-for the fact that one of its members was that Amerigo Vespucci whose
-fortune it was to have his name attached to the continent.</p>
-
-<p>Amerigo Vespucci (or Vespusze, as Columbus spells it) was a Florentine
-engaged in the shipping business who was attracted to Spain by the
-maritime activity there, and became interested in equipping the
-second flotilla of Columbus and in other similar enterprises for the
-government. The wealth and influence thus gained and his general
-abilities led him to join that expedition of Ojeda in 1499, and
-during the next four years he made three other voyages to Brazil, in
-which the bay of Rio Janeiro was entered (New Year’s day, 1501), and
-an exploration southward extended probably as far as South Georgia
-(Islands). Upon his return from this last voyage, in 1505, he publicly
-asserted that he had visited, in 1497, the coast of what is now the
-southern United States. It has lately been shown by Spanish records,
-however, that at that date he was busy in the government dockyards
-in Spain; therefore his assertion was false. It served, however, to
-deceive a forgetful public, and to procure for its author the coveted
-glory of being the first “discoverer” of the “New World,” as he first
-called it (though there is no evidence that he understood it to be a
-continent), and hence the one entitled to give it his name.</p>
-
-<p>This bold claim achieved its purpose. The oldest known map of the
-whole world, dated <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 1500, said to have been drawn by
-the great artist Leonardo da Vinci, from data furnished by Juan de la
-Cosa, and hence known to historians as the “De la Cosa Mappimundi”
-(it is preserved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span> in Madrid), bears the name “America” across the new
-countries for the first known time; but Juan de la Cosa was with Ojeda
-and Vespucci on the expedition of 1499, and doubtless Vespucci managed
-the naming. In 1507, only a year after the death of Columbus, there
-appeared in France the “Cosmographie Introductio” of Waldseem&uuml;ller
-(also called Hylacomylus), which was regarded as the most complete and
-authentic geography of its time; and here the name of <i>America</i> was
-boldly written across “a fourth part of the world, since Amerigo found
-it.” The name (a Latin derivative) was novel, easy to pronounce, no one
-knew or cared as to the right of it, and so it stood.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_063">
-<img src="images/i_063.jpg" width="600" height="463" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE “SANTA MARIA”—THE FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS’ FLEET.</p></div>
-
-<p>A few lines more as to the Spanish and Portuguese navigators in these
-waters, and then we shall have done with them for the present. In
-1499 one of the Pin&ccedil;ons sailed from Spain straight to the Amazon, as
-has been mentioned, avoiding the West Indies, as if he knew precisely
-whither<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span> he was bound, and reached there in January of 1500. A few
-months later a large Portuguese expedition under Pedro Cabral, starting
-for India around the cape, was blown so far to the west that it ran
-against Brazil. Everybody was hitting upon untrodden shores in those
-inspiring days, and Cabral promptly took possession for his king.
-As this shore was outside (east of) the hemisphere assigned by the
-Pope to the Spanish, the Portuguese kept it for 389 years, in spite
-of Pin&ccedil;on’s priority. In 1508 Ojeda obtained the government of the
-northern coast of South America, and Nicuesa of the region north of the
-Gulf of Darien; and with the arrival of these adventurers in New Spain
-began that era of rapine and horror which will forever disgrace the
-Spanish name. The rapacious governors and their wild crews quarreled
-and fought with each other as well as with the downtrodden natives,
-and exploration was carried on by piracy. A learned man, Martin
-Enciso, went out to take command in 1510, but he was deposed by his
-soldiers the next year and sent back to Europe, where he made the
-first book printed in Spanish (1519) describing America. His place was
-taken by Vasco Nu&ntilde;ez Balboa, who entered upon a career of exploration
-and peaceful conquest, generally conciliating the Indians, who told
-him of another sea not far to the west, and on September 25, 1513,
-guided him to the summit of a hill near Panama, whence he, first of
-Europeans, gazed upon the Pacific. Who can imagine the emotions of such
-a sight!—for it told the Spaniards that this land was not the eastern
-margin of Asia, but a new continent. Balboa made his way through the
-forests as rapidly as he could, and on the 29th, wading into the surf,
-banner in hand, took possession of the waters in the name of the King
-of Castile.</p>
-
-<p>Balboa at once began preparations to utilize his discovery, for the
-Indians had also excited him and his men by tales of a country to the
-south abounding in gold. He cut and shaped timbers for small ships,
-and had with enormous trouble and labor transported these across the
-isthmus, intending there to build a fleet and sail southward, when
-he was superseded in command by a new governor, Pedrarias. This man,
-a jealous and brutal adventurer, on a false pretext of disloyalty
-arrested and beheaded Balboa before he could get away—an act that
-“was one of the greatest calamities that could have happened to South
-America at that time; for ... a humane and judicious man would have
-been the conqueror of Peru, instead of the cruel and ignorant Pizarro.”
-The frightful destruction of the country of the Incas soon followed,
-while Cort&eacute;s overran Mexico and De Soto invaded Florida.</p>
-
-<p>It has doubtless by this time been in the mind of more than one
-reader to ask whether, while the men of the Mediterranean region were
-making<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span> these notable searchings for new shores, the men of northern
-Europe were standing idle. What were the mariners of France and the
-Netherlands, Scandinavia and Great Britain, doing? Well, all were doing
-something, and some of them produced results of novel seafaring that
-were well worth the getting, but these were principally in far northern
-waters, as we shall read in the next chapter. It was not until the
-opening of the sixteenth century that in England, at least, that era
-of far voyaging began which signalized the Elizabethan age on the sea
-as much as the poets and dramatists and statesmen-writers of her court
-distinguished it on land.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_065">
-<img src="images/i_065.jpg" width="600" height="439" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A PEACEFUL DAY ON THE SPANISH MAIN.</p></div>
-
-<p>It was, however, earlier than that—in the reign of Henry VII—that
-England’s story of discovery begins, and the first names are those of
-two Italians known in English as John and Sebastian Cabot, father and
-son, who were then residents of Bristol. The Bristol folk were at that
-time the foremost mariners of England, who often went to Iceland and
-all the nearer isles; and they firmly believed in certain traditional
-islands and coasts far away to the west, which seem to have been
-composed of no better material than the airy structures of the sunset
-clouds and the romantic tales of Phenician sailors and other travelers
-in the dawn of history. As long ago as when Strabo wrote, a century
-before the birth of Christ, these things were of old belief, and he
-recounts the delights then told of the “Isles of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span> Blest,” west of
-the farthest verge of Africa. When the Canary Islands became known as
-facts, the myth moved farther west; and when acquaintance with the
-Azores proved them to be only natural earth with a fair share of its
-ills, as well as of its good, people insisted that still other islands
-must lie farther away, where the Elysian Fields basked in perpetual
-summer and men were eternally happy. The old idea charms us even yet
-when we sing “Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood stand dressed in
-living green.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_066">
-<img src="images/i_066.jpg" width="600" height="351" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">VOYAGING TO THE ISLES OF THE BLEST.</p></div>
-
-<p>But no such higher rendering occurred to the men of the earlier time.
-They believed firmly in the actual existence of these ever-fortunate
-islands under the sunset horizon of the Atlantic, and (in the north)
-called them the Isles of St. Brandon, the “green isle of Brazil”
-(the root of which word seems to express the idea of redness, such
-as appears in low sunset clouds), the Isle of the Seven Cities or
-Antillia, and by other names. Ferdinand Columbus, a son of Christopher,
-says in his “History” that his father fully expected to meet, “before
-he came to India, a very convenient island or continent from which he
-might pursue with more advantage his main design.” This does not prove
-that Columbus put any faith in the reality of these old notions, nor
-does he seem to be responsible for the fact that the name <i>Antilles</i>
-was immediately attached to the archipelago he actually did meet
-with, and The <i>Brazils</i> to a part of the mainland next found. These
-names had been appearing on conjectural maps of the Atlantic side of
-the earth for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span> many years before his time; and that they represented
-realities to many hard-headed merchants and sailors of his time is
-shown conclusively by the fact that between 1480 and 1487 at least two
-carefully planned naval expeditions had gone from Bristol, England,
-in search of them. How much vague memories of early Norse and Irish
-findings in the west may have given weight in Bristol to these old
-myths is hard to say; but at any rate it was there the search for this
-pot of gold at the end of the rainbow bore unexpected and momentous
-results, but all were surprised at the distance involved.</p>
-
-<p>About 1496 John Cabot, then a resident of Bristol, proposed to the
-king an expedition in search of a new route to the Indies by sailing
-due west from Ireland. Henry VII was excited by the news of Columbus’
-southerly findings, and was eager to secure something of the kind for
-England. Nevertheless, although the king granted privileges that might
-prove profitable in case of success, he seems to have furnished no
-money. Cabot, therefore, sailed away, privately equipped, in a small
-caravel named <i>Matthew</i>, carrying only eighteen persons.</p>
-
-<p>Never was a voyage of discovery, the consequences of which were so
-far-reaching, entered upon with less pomp or flourish of trumpets. So
-little note of it was made at the time that the very name of John Cabot
-narrowly escaped being lost altogether, and the record of his work came
-very near being replaced by a confused account of the doings of his son
-Sebastian; for it was not until certain letters had been found—and that
-within a very few years—in the contemporary archives of Spain and other
-European countries, that we were able to give any sure account of the
-matter.</p>
-
-<p>It is now plain that John Cabot, in the <i>Matthew</i>, leaving Bristol
-early in May, 1497, and having passed Ireland, shaped his course toward
-the north, then turned to the west and proceeded for many days until he
-came to land, where he disembarked on June 24, and planted an English
-flag.</p>
-
-<p>There seems to be no doubt that this was the mainland of North
-America, and the general opinion has prevailed that his landfall was
-the extremity of Cape Breton. Cabot stayed some days, but how far he
-traced the coast, and whether he learned of Newfoundland or Prince
-Edward Island, are matters of conjecture. At any rate, he soon turned
-homeward, and arrived in Bristol probably on August 6.</p>
-
-<p>We can imagine with what eagerness his story was listened to, as he
-told of the fair, temperate, well-wooded land, its people and animals
-and fruitfulness, that he had seen. But the thing that impressed the
-Bristol men most was the report of the enormous abundance of codfish
-there. This was something these canny men could see without any
-illusions, and possess themselves of regardless of papal bulls; and
-they at once abandoned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span> their northern fishing-grounds and began to
-resort to the Banks of Newfoundland, whither they were quickly followed
-by large annual fleets of Norman, Breton, Spanish, and Portuguese
-fishermen. John Cabot intended to go again the next year and make his
-way onward to Japan, as he believed he could do, for, like the others,
-he thought what he had found was only a remote eastern part of Asia;
-and in 1498 he actually did sail westward from Bristol with five
-ships, victualed for a year. None of these ships ever returned, and
-no evidence exists that they ever reached their goal; and with them
-John Cabot, to whom England owed her early supremacy in North America,
-disappears from view.</p>
-
-<p>Sebastian Cabot was a son of John Cabot, and a skilful map-maker.
-Whether he went with his father on the first voyage is disputed; there
-seems no direct evidence that he did so. That he did not go on the
-second voyage is plain, for he had a long subsequent career, of which
-accurate knowledge is a late acquisition; here it is only necessary
-to add that by his statements to Peter Martyr and others he allowed
-the erroneous impression to pass into history, if he did not directly
-authorize the lie, that it was he, and not his father, who discovered
-America and the fishing-grounds.</p>
-
-<p>Now that the way across the Atlantic was learned, chivalrous sailors
-hurried to add what they could to the map. Corte-Real, a Portuguese
-of rank, struck northwest, and hit upon and named Labrador as early
-as 1500. The next voyage of prominence introduces the French as
-competitors, Francis I sending the Florentine Verrazano, a typical
-sea-rover of the period, who had already been to Brazil and the East
-Indies and was finally hanged as a pirate, to find out what he could
-about northern America. He steered west from the Madeira Islands in
-January, 1524, found land near Cape Fear (North Carolina), and claimed
-to have traced the coast as far north as Nova Scotia, besides entering
-a large bay (either New York or Narragansett). His whole story,
-however, rests on certain letters and maps the authenticity of which
-has been hotly disputed; and at any rate little, if anything, came of
-this voyage.</p>
-
-<p>It was far different with the next one, however,—that one sent from
-France in 1534, under the command of Jacques Cartier, who sailed from
-St. Malo in two tiny vessels to Newfoundland, and learned of the mouth
-of the St. Lawrence River. Then, like all the other captains, none of
-whom could stay over winter in America, because their vessels were too
-small to store provisions, and because they were beset by fears, not
-only of visible savages, but of invisible hobgoblins, he returned to
-France. The next year found him back again, however, this time steering
-his vessels up the St. Lawrence to “Hochelaga” (Montreal), and later
-carrying home an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span> account that led to so immediate a movement on the
-part of France that Canada was the scene of the earliest colonization
-of the New World, properly speaking, for the Spanish settlements
-in the south were thus far nothing but military stations. France,
-indeed, dreamed of obtaining the whole of North America for herself,
-and attempted soon after to colonize Florida and the Carolinas; but
-these attempts failed, and she was able to hold only the valley of the
-St. Lawrence and the shore of its gulf. These things happened later,
-however, and for many years the Atlantic coast of North America was
-left unclaimed by any one, while the English and Dutch were busy in the
-far north, the Spanish were rioting in the tropics, and the Portuguese
-turned their attention to the southern and eastern quarters of the
-globe. It is one of the most striking curiosities of the history of
-the development of civilization on the globe, following the stagnation
-of the middle ages and the desolation of the plague-ridden thirteenth
-century, that the most remote, unprofitable, unhealthy regions were so
-fiercely struggled for, while the best parts of the New World were left
-until the last.</p>
-
-<p>Having found Brazil, both Spaniards and Portuguese proceeded to trace
-the continent southward, hoping to find a practicable way to Peru
-around it. Several experienced navigators worked southward, the best
-known of whom is Juan Diaz de Solis, who entered the La Plata River
-and was killed there by the Indians in 1516. Columbus had not been a
-moment too soon to be first. Nevertheless it was left to a stranger in
-those waters, the indomitable Magellan (Fern&atilde;o de Magalh&atilde;es), to reap
-the reward of success. The Pope and all the bishops still declared
-that the earth was flat; but so little was this now believed, even
-by themselves, that Magellan, who had just quitted the service of
-Portugal, dared to propose to “his most Catholic majesty” the King of
-Spain to sail west instead of east to the Moluccas, just as though the
-earth were globular and might be circumnavigated; and the king not only
-dared to listen, but approved of the proposition, which seemed entirely
-practicable <i>if</i> South America could be passed. That was the problem
-Magellan set himself to solve. Should he succeed, could the Moluccas
-be reached by sailing westward, then they would fall into that half of
-the earth given by the Pope to Spain, and Portugal’s present claim to
-them would be overthrown. Thus the experiment was well worth making in
-behalf of politics as well as knowledge, and Magellan was furnished
-with five ships, carrying two hundred and thirty-seven men. The
-<i>Trinidad</i> was the admiral’s ship; but the <i>San Vittoria</i> was destined
-for immortality.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>He struck boldly for the Southwest, not crossing the trough of the
-Atlantic as Columbus had done, but passing down the length of it, his
-aim being to find some cleft or passage in the American continent
-through which he might sail into the Great South Sea. For seventy
-days he was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>
-becalmed under the line. He then lost sight of the North Star,
-but courageously held on toward the “pole antarktike.” He nearly
-foundered in a storm, “which did not abate till the three fires
-called St. Helen, St. Nicholas, and St. Clare appeared playing in
-the rigging of the ships. In a new land, to which he gave the name
-Patagoni, he found giants of “good corporature”.... His perseverance
-and resolution were at last rewarded by the discovery of the Strait
-named by him San Vittoria, in affectionate honor of his ship; but
-which, with a worthy sentiment, other sailors soon changed to the
-<i>Straits of Magellan</i>. On November 25, 1520, after a year and a
-quarter of struggling, he issued forth from its western portals, and
-entered the Great South Sea, shedding tears of joy, as Pigafetta, an
-eye-witness, relates, when he recognized its infinite expanse....
-Admiring its illimitable but placid surface, and exulting in the
-meditation of its secret perils soon to be tried, he courteously
-imposed upon it the name it is forever to bear—the <i>Pacific Ocean</i>....</p>
-
-<p>And now the great sailor, having burst through the barrier of the
-American continent, steered for the northwest, attempting to regain
-the equator. For three months and twenty days he sailed on the
-Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He was compelled by famine to
-strip off the pieces of skin and leather wherewith his rigging was
-here and there bound, to soak them in the sea, and then soften them
-with warm water, so as to make a wretched food; to eat the sweepings
-of the ship and other loathsome matter; to drink water that had
-become putrid by keeping; and yet he resolutely held on his course,
-though his men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, “their gums
-grew over their teeth, and so they could not eat.” [This was scurvy,
-the dread of all mariners in those times and long afterward.] He
-estimated that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than
-12,000 miles.</p>
-
-<p>In the whole history of human undertakings [declares Dr. John W.
-Draper, from whose striking sketch of this achievement in his
-“Intellectual Development of Europe” I am quoting]—in the whole
-history of human undertakings there is nothing that exceeds, if,
-indeed, there is anything that equals, this voyage of Magellan’s.
-That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison. It is a display of
-superhuman courage, superhuman perseverance—a display of resolution
-not to be diverted from its purpose by any motive or any suffering....</p>
-
-<p>This unparalleled resolution met its reward at last. Magellan reached
-a group of islands north of the equator—the Ladrones. In a few
-days more he became aware that his labors had been successful. He
-met with adventurers from Sumatra. But, though he had thus grandly
-accomplished his object, it was not given to him to complete the
-circumnavigation of the globe. At an island called Zebu, or Mutan,
-he was killed, either, as has been variously related, in a mutiny of
-his men, or, as they declared, in a conflict with the savages, or
-insidiously by poison.... Hardly was he gone when his crew learned
-that they were actually in the vicinity of the Moluccas [having
-previously wandered too far north, and discovered the Philippines],
-and that the object of their voyage was accomplished....</p>
-
-<p>And now they prepared to bring the news of their success back to
-Spain. Magellan’s lieutenant, Sebastian d’Elanco, directed his course
-for the Cape of Good Hope, again encountering the most fearful
-hardships. Out of his slender crew he lost 21 men. He doubled the
-Cape at last; and on September 7, 1522, in the port of St. Lucar,
-near Seville, under his orders, the good ship <i>Vittoria</i> came safely
-to an anchor. She had accomplished the greatest achievement in the
-history of the human race. She had circumnavigated the earth.</p></div>
-
-<p>The immediate result of this voyage was to impress Spain’s sovereignty
-upon the East Indies; but a vaster and more far-reaching consequence
-was the influence it exerted, by its proof that the world was really
-a globe, to free men’s minds from blind belief in and guidance by a
-tradition, which had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span> taught that the earth was a flat plain surrounded
-by water,—an error sanctioned by St. Augustine and other influential
-teachers. Magellan impressed a name upon the greatest of the oceans,
-and has his own name gloriously emblazoned upon both the map of the
-earth and the map of the sky in the southern hemisphere; but his
-greatest title to honor, after all, is that he struck dogma the hardest
-blow it ever received.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_071">
-<img src="images/i_071.jpg" width="600" height="475" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SEA-SURF AT SANTO DOMINGO.</p></div>
-
-<p>The sixteenth century seems to have been, outside of the Arctic
-regions, an era of surveying rather than of exploration by sea, yet
-some notable work was done in the East, where all nations now entered
-as competitors in the trade, seizing upon every island or mainland
-shore that they could, and holding their possessions as long as
-possible. Even the English entered heartily into this rivalry, the
-great East India Company having been founded in 1599. With its trading
-we have nothing to do, but must note that it extended knowledge of
-Oceanica considerably, and added greatly to Europe’s information as
-to India, the Malayan peninsula and larger islands, China, and Japan.
-The Spanish and Portuguese found themselves so busy in defending that
-to which they already laid claim that they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span> had little time to search
-for new lands; and this sort of enterprise fell mainly to the Dutch,
-who, now that the Netherlands were at last free from the long and cruel
-tyranny of Spain, were energetically making up for lost time. Their
-captain, Van Noort, went out by way of the Straits of Magellan to the
-Philippines, and got back to Rotterdam between 1598 and 1601. Another
-fleet made the same voyage fifteen years later; and in 1616 Cape Horn
-was rounded by Willem Cornelis Schouten, who gave the name of his home
-village, Hoorn, to that desolate terminus of South America.</p>
-
-<p>For many years geographers had held belief in a vast “southern
-continent,”—<i>Terra Australis</i>,—and most of the islands found in the
-South Pacific were accidental results of some attempt to reach it. New
-Guinea had been sighted a century before, and perhaps Australia also,
-of which several navigators got glimpses here and there early in the
-sixteenth century, satisfying them that it also was a great island.
-It was not until this century was half gone, however, that the map
-of that quarter of the “South Sea” was filled out with any accuracy;
-and this was due to the skill and labor of an eminent Dutch voyager,
-Abel Janszen Tasman, who was despatched southward with two ships by
-the colonial government at Batavia, where the Dutch had already gained
-political ascendancy.</p>
-
-<p>“This voyage,” we are told, “proved to be the most important to
-geography that had been undertaken since the first circumnavigation of
-the globe.” Tasman sailed from Batavia in the yacht <i>Heemskirk</i>, on
-the 14th of August, 1642, and from Mauritius on the 8th of October. On
-November 24 high land was sighted in 42&deg; 30&acute; S., which was named Van
-Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), and, after landing there, sail was again
-made, and New Zealand (at first called Staatenland) was discovered on
-the 13th of December. Tasman communicated with the natives and anchored
-in what he called Murderers’ Bay, because several men were massacred
-there by the natives. Thence he took an irregular course east and
-north, until he arrived at the Friendly Isles of Cook. In April, 1643,
-he was off the north coast of New Guinea, having meanwhile sailed
-around New Britain and New Ireland (now New Mecklenburg), and on June
-15 he returned to Batavia.</p>
-
-<p>The contribution to sea-knowledge of the remaining voyages in this
-century were mainly in the direction of a better understanding of
-winds, currents, ice movements, tides, and an improvement in the
-methods of building, rigging, and navigating vessels intended for
-long voyages. Map-making received a great impetus and was especially
-cultivated by the Dutch, among whom Mercator became famous by inventing
-the useful projection that bears his name and is still most commonly
-used. Nevertheless, the improvement, especially in instruments of
-navigation, was slow.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span> The astrolabe generally gave place to the
-cross-staff; and this to a better device called the back-staff, of
-which an improved form, invented by John Davis, remained long in use.
-This was called the Davis quadrant; and with it “the observer stood
-with his back to the sun, and, looking through the sights, brought the
-shadow of a pin into coincidence with the horizon.” Many variations of
-this instrument were made, until, in the middle of the next century, it
-was superseded by the sextant. Thus before the close of the seventeenth
-century, astronomers and navigators had learned how to determine
-latitude fairly accurately, and the sailor had prepared for him a
-variety of tables of stars, almanacs, and other mathematical guides.
-The determination of longitude was yet difficult, however, owing
-largely to the imperfection of timepieces; and it was not until the
-last year of the century, signalized by the first recorded sea-voyage
-made purely for scientific purposes, that much advance was made. This
-voyage, lasting two years (1699-1700), was undertaken by the eminent
-English astronomer Edmund Halley for the express purpose of obtaining
-information necessary to the improvement of the compass and methods
-of ascertaining the position of a ship at sea, was productive of
-results of the greatest service, and placed the science of navigation
-upon a sure footing. It was followed early in the next century by
-the establishment in England of the Longitude Board, a scientific
-commission charged with the duty of determining longitudes and studying
-navigation. From this board came the “Nautical Almanac,” which first
-appeared in 1767, but similar almanacs are now published annually by
-the governments of almost all maritime powers, and the editorship is
-esteemed in the United States one of the most honored positions in the
-naval service. These books contain ephemerides, or tables of positions
-for each day of that year of all the heavenly bodies, “predictions of
-astronomical phenomena, and the angular distances of the moon from the
-sun, planets, and fixed stars,” all referred to some stated meridian.</p>
-
-<p>With such an almanac, an improved compass, and one of Newton’s new
-sextants as a means of quick and accurate observation of sun and moon
-and stars, the navigator had little need to doubt as to where he was;
-and maps began to show a corresponding improvement in accuracy.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_074">
-<img src="images/i_074.jpg" width="408" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">“BUCCANEERS AND MANY WILD SEA-ROVERS.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The early part of this century, as we shall see later, was the era of
-the buccaneers and of many wild sea-rovers whose far-wandering barks,
-in search of adventure, picked up much information at the expense
-of human lives and hard-earned property. The foremost of these was
-Dampier, who seems to have gone almost everywhere a ship could go,
-and who found out many new things, which he had the power of telling
-well, as to Australasia; and the strait between New Guinea and New
-Britain, which he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span> discovered, is named after him. Many a commander was
-now cruising in those waters, however, under English and Dutch flags
-mainly, finding new lands and pillaging old ones—such as Roggewein,
-Anson, Byron, Wallis, Carteret, Bougainville, and others; and such
-important islands as Easter, Tahiti, Charlotte, and Gloucester groups,
-Pitcairn, and others, were found during the first half of this century.
-But now the English were to redeem their good name by sending out a
-government expedition, or series of expeditions, whose object was
-scientific discovery and the humane study of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span> men and resources on
-the other side of the world, instead of forced trade or bloody rapine.
-These were the three expeditions commanded by Captain James Cook, one
-of the most capable officers in the British navy.</p>
-
-<p>The first voyage was made in 1767 for the purpose of carrying a party
-of astronomers and naturalists to Tahiti to observe there a transit of
-Venus, after which a survey was made of the then almost unknown coasts
-of New Zealand and Eastern Australia. The second voyage was to explore
-the Antarctic regions, whither the French had preceded him, as we shall
-see in the next chapter; and we need only say here that Cook finally
-disposed of the tradition of a vast <i>terra australis</i>—at any rate a
-habitable one. It is to his third voyage, then, that he principally
-owes his fame.</p>
-
-<p>This was undertaken in pursuance of the ruling idea of his day, that a
-sea-route might be discovered north of the American continent, which
-would vastly shorten the trip from Europe to China and the Spice
-Islands. Others were seeking it directly by way of Baffin’s Bay, and
-Cook was sent to attack the problem from the Pacific side. He was
-given command of his old ship <i>Resolution</i> and a new one, <i>Discovery</i>,
-outfitted in the best possible manner, and especially guarded, in the
-matter of provisions, against scurvy—that dread of the old-fashioned
-seamen, in respect to which Cook himself had introduced such new and
-valuable preventives as would alone have entitled his name to grateful
-remembrance. He was commanded to revisit, on his way out, the South
-Pacific Islands; and departed from England in June, 1776, steering by
-way of the Cape of Good Hope, and reaching the archipelagoes in the
-spring of 1777, where he cruised for nearly a year. In January, 1778,
-he sailed north from the Friendly Islands, and a few days later hit
-upon a large, inhabited, unknown group of islands, whose principal one
-was called Hawaii by the people, but which he named Sandwich Islands,
-in honor of an English earl who had taken great interest in his plans.
-Here he spent some delightful days, and then bore away to the west
-coast of America, which the English still claimed under Drake’s name of
-New Albion, and which he struck near Puget Sound. Thence he went slowly
-along the coast northward until he found and penetrated the deep bay
-since called Cook’s Inlet. His hope that this might prove a sort of
-northern Straits of Magellan was quickly disappointed, and he went on
-into and through Bering Sea and Strait until he was stopped by the ice
-on the north shore of Alaska, at a point still called Icy Cape. Then he
-turned back, surveying both shores of the strait, and again made his
-way to the Sandwich Islands, where, in an unfortunate quarrel with the
-natives, he was killed. The Hawaiians have always said that this was
-the act of a ruffian among them, and that the chiefs and the best of
-the people never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span> wished nor intended any harm to their visitors; and
-this is probably true. His executive officer took the ships back to
-England in October, 1780.</p>
-
-<p>The voyages of this able and intelligent commander bore fruit in
-many ways. One was the colonization of Australia, Tasmania, and New
-Zealand by the English, which began in 1788. Another was the voyage
-of Vancouver to the west coast of America in 1792, which intercepted
-the surveys of the Spaniards there, under Quadra and others, and
-enforced English possession of all the country between the Californian
-settlements of the Spaniards and the Russian posts in Alaska, though
-he curiously failed to find either Puget Sound or the Columbia River.
-A third direct result, and from some points of view the most important
-one, was the opening of a great number of the South Sea Islands to
-Christian missionaries.</p>
-
-<p>By this time there had arisen in the New World which these voyagers had
-first stumbled upon, and then searched for, and afterward scrutinized
-so carefully, a new, composite nation, which somehow forgot that all
-their broad and fertile land had been given away centuries before by
-an old gentleman in Rome to his friends the Spaniards, and acted as
-though they thought it belonged to themselves; and by and by this
-thriving nation hoisted a starry flag of its own, and proclaimed itself
-the United States of America. Then, not to be behind European powers,
-whose navigators were enriching libraries with magnificent chronicles
-of scientific studies in sea-science, such as those of the French
-“Voyage of the <i>Astrolabe</i>,” the Russian narratives of Krusenstern
-and Kotzebue, and the English explorations of Beechey (who was
-accompanied by Charles Darwin), the United States sent to the Pacific a
-well-equipped expedition under Lieutenant (afterward Admiral) Charles
-Wilkes. This was gone from 1838 to 1845, surveyed the west coast of
-South America, wandered about Oceanica, and did its best to penetrate
-the icy limits of the Antarctic zone. The results were six magnificent
-folio volumes, containing not only the narrative of the cruise, but
-contributions to science by James D. Dana, Horatio Hale, John Cassin,
-and other men of the last generation great in American science.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_076">
-<img src="images/i_076.jpg" width="600" height="141" alt="end of chapter decoration" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">SECRETS WON FROM THE FROZEN NORTH</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_077.jpg" width="75" height="73" alt="ornate capital A" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">As</span> soon as the sea-routes between Europe and the far East were learned,
-and the American coasts had been mapped, the region within the Arctic
-circle became the most attractive field for nautical discovery. All
-this earlier Arctic exploration, however, was not, as it has lately
-become, a system of scientific research, but was simply a series of
-attempts to open new roads for commerce to follow. It occurred to every
-navigator that as a sea-way had been gained past the southern end of
-America, so one around its northern border might be disclosed; and
-perhaps, also, a ship-route along the northern coast of Siberia. Either
-of these would be far shorter than to go to “Cathay” around either
-Cape Horn or Cape of Good Hope, and would enable the English and other
-northerners to avoid their enemies, the Spanish and Portuguese, who
-commanded the southern waters.</p>
-
-<p>The first Arctic voyage of exploration, properly speaking, was that of
-Willoughby and Chancellor, who in 1553 penetrated the seas north of
-Scandinavia, where they became separated. Willoughby and his men tried
-to winter on the coast of Russian Lapland, but all died of scurvy.</p>
-
-<p>Chancellor, however, pushed on into the White Sea, reached a monastery
-on the coast, and thence made his way to Moscow, where he was well
-received, and thus opened a trade route of incalculable advantage to
-both England and Russia. It led at once to the organization of the
-Muscovy Company, and began a commerce now regularly carried on in
-steam vessels to Archangel, which in 1897 was connected with Moscow by
-railroad.</p>
-
-<p>By 1580 several other commanders had tried to improve on this
-performance, but none got past the Kara Sea, and the next important
-effort was headed toward that “Northwest Passage,” which for more than
-three centuries was the lodestone of Arctic students and voyagers.
-It was in charge of Martin Frobisher, later one of England’s most
-conspicuous admirals, who afterward made a larger expedition in which
-he learned many facts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span> about the Labrador coast and Hudson Strait.
-Another English seaman, and a more scientific one, John Davis, made
-three remarkable voyages, between 1585 and 1589, and increased the map
-by a careful delineation of both coasts of the strait still called
-after him.</p>
-
-<p>Shortly afterward Dutch merchants had sent three expeditions northward
-under command of William Barentz to search for a <i>northeast</i> passage,
-the third and most important of which sailed in 1596 and found it
-impossible to penetrate the ice east of Nova Zembla (which had been
-seen first by Burrough in 1556, who had been shown the way by Russian
-fishermen), but discovered Bear Island and Spitzbergen. The crew
-of Barentz’s vessel spent the winter of 1596-97 at Ice Haven, Nova
-Zembla—the first successfully to face a winter in the Arctic zone.
-When the next spring came they made their way to Lapland and homeward
-in boats, but Barentz died on the road. This voyage was highly
-important in opening to the Netherlands the whale and seal fisheries
-of that region which has ever since been known as Barentz’s Sea, but
-it discouraged the hopes of a “northeast passage.” In 1871 Barentz’s
-winter quarters at Ice Haven were found undisturbed, after a lapse of
-274 years, and in 1875 part of the journal kept by this brave mariner
-was recovered. Almost every year about this time saw English, Dutch,
-and Danish ships going north, each adding some new fact to geography
-and the knowledge of polar waters and ice. One of them, in 1607, was
-commanded by Henry Hudson, who searched the North Atlantic, found Jan
-Mayen, and pointed the way to the Spitzbergen whale fisheries; yet he
-had hardly more than a sail-boat, and a crew of only eleven men.</p>
-
-<p>The following year this intrepid man tried to go to China north of
-Asia, but failed as Barentz had done, and returned “void of hope of a
-northeast passage.” Nevertheless, he tried it again a year later in
-the service of Amsterdam merchants, but his men were obstreperous,
-and, yielding to his own inclination as well as to theirs, he turned
-west to find that “Northwest Passage” in which everybody then believed
-because they hoped, and because of the difficulty of getting so great
-a fact as the real North American continent proved to be accepted by
-the popular imagination, which was used to small things in geography.
-Very willingly, then, Hudson’s little ship, the <i>Half Moon</i>, was turned
-toward the southwest; and it found something better than it sought, for
-the Hudson River and the site of the future metropolis of the New World
-were added to the map.</p>
-
-<p>Hudson’s success in this voyage led to his immediate engagement by a
-company of English merchants and speculators, who were willing to risk
-additional money in searching for a northwest passage if he would lead.</p>
-
-<p>In 1610, therefore, Hudson took command of a new ship, the
-<i>Discoverie</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span> and sailing in her to Baffin’s Bay, found the great
-opening of Hudson Strait, and with high hope that his goal was now
-in view followed it westward into Hudson Bay. Here he coasted south
-to what we term James Bay, and, after a comfortable winter, resumed
-his examination of the west coast, whereupon the majority of his men
-mutinied, set Hudson and several sick men adrift in a rowboat, and
-turned back. Most of the mutineers died, but the vessel was finally
-taken back to London, where the murderers were promptly questioned and
-nearly as promptly hanged.</p>
-
-<p>The story of another remarkable voyage closes the story of this early
-attempt at the problem which, two hundred and fifty years afterward,
-was to be solved only by proof of its uselessness. In 1616 another
-<i>Discovery</i>—a caravel of only fifty-five tons—went north from England
-in charge of William Baffin. “On the 30th of May he had reached Davis’
-farthest point, Sanderson’s Hope, in 72&deg; 41&acute; N., ... and reached, 1st
-July, an open sea, the ‘North Water’ of the whalers of to-day. Passing
-Capes York, Atholl and Parry, he yet pushed northward, and on 5th July
-attained his farthest point within sight of Cape Alexander.</p>
-
-<p>His latitude, about 77&deg; 45&acute; N., remained unequaled in that sea for two
-hundred and thirty-six years.” Arctic success depends on good luck.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_079">
-<img src="images/i_079.jpg" width="600" height="473" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">FANTASTIC ICEBERGS IN HUDSON STRAIT.</p></div>
-
-<p>The next century (1700 to 1800) was a period of active polar research
-in the Old World. The Russians completed their knowledge of their
-Arctic coasts, Popoff reaching East Cape in 1711, and bringing back
-an account not only of various islands, but also of a continental
-shore eastward.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span> It was this report that caused Peter the Great to set
-on foot a costly scheme of research upon the northeastern coasts of
-Siberia, which was placed in the hands of Vitus Bering, a Dane, in his
-navy, but accomplished nothing of any value; and it was not until 1740
-that Bering finally crossed over in a blundering sort of way and made
-a brief examination of the coast of Alaska, where his ship was finally
-wrecked, and he died of discouragement and chagrin. He saw neither the
-sea nor the strait that bears his name, was not the first to reach the
-American continent, and never learned whether or not it was connected
-with Siberia. Nevertheless his voyage had fruitful results, for it
-led to vast fisheries and fur-gatherings, and the writings of his
-naturalist, Steller, had and still have great scientific importance.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_080">
-<img src="images/i_080.jpg" width="550" height="248" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A WALRUS BREEDING-GROUND, BERING STRAIT.</p></div>
-
-<p>By this time the whaling and allied marine industries, and the work of
-such excellent explorers as the Dutchman Martens, had made mariners
-thoroughly acquainted with the North Atlantic from Nova Zembla to
-Greenland, and a vast advance had been effected in the knowledge of
-navigation amid the ice, and in the building and equipment of ships
-and the proper methods of provisioning and clothing and treating crews
-in order to maintain health and comfort as well as mere safety. These
-well-fitted and daringly managed whalers had at the beginning of the
-nineteenth century begun to penetrate far into the waters west of
-Greenland, in spite of a very curious fact, which would make anybody
-but a British whaleman pause—namely, that there were no such waters. So
-their best maps and treatises said!</p>
-
-<p>Two hundred years had now passed since Baffin’s return from his
-wonderful voyage of 1616, and during all that time not a white man’s
-keel had plowed the chilling solitudes he had left, except lately these
-venturesome<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span> whalers, who did not frequent libraries. Consequently
-Baffin’s work had first been forgotten and then disbelieved; so that
-at last first-class maps were published which omitted Baffin’s Bay
-altogether, and books were written, such as Barrows’ “Arctic Voyages”
-(London, 1818), that denied the authenticity of his narrative. As the
-nineteenth century opened, however, England began to turn her attention
-to the renewal of polar studies. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s men were
-reaching the coast of their Territories here and there; but otherwise
-the whole Arctic Ocean north of British America was unknown.</p>
-
-<p>To relieve herself of the shame of this Great Britain soon sent into
-that field a rapid succession of explorers, many of whom soon became
-famous. The very first of these, John Ross, despatched in 1818,
-confirmed fully the geography laid down by Baffin as far as Cape York,
-in spite of the learned book-makers, and reported a great number and
-variety of interesting facts; whereupon a much larger expedition was at
-once arranged and placed in command of a naval officer named William
-Edward Parry, who went out in 1819 with orders to find the northwest
-passage, and who had in his staff such men as Sabine, Liddon, James
-Ross, Reid, Crozier, and similar material, all stimulated not only by
-naval and scientific pride, but by the offer by Parliament of a reward
-of $100,000 to him who should first discover the desired thoroughfare.</p>
-
-<p>This first voyage was a grand success. Forcing his way into Lancaster
-Sound in midsummer, Parry found that Ross’s report that it was a
-landlocked bay was erroneous. As Greely tells it:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The mirage-mountains of the previous year had vanished, and as Parry
-crowded sail westward, he opened a series of magnificent waterways
-hitherto unknown. The way lay through an archipelago (Parry), with
-North Devon, Cornwallis, Bathurst and Melville islands to the north,
-and Cockburn, Prince of Wales, and Banks islands to the south.
-Lancaster Sound, broken at its western end by Prince Regent Inlet,
-gave way to Barrow Strait, which broadened into Melville Sound, while
-yet farther to the west the encroaching land formed Banks Strait
-wherethrough these channels open into polar ocean.</p></div>
-
-<p>If you will look at the map you will see that this list comprehends
-pretty nearly everything south of Smith Sound. Many details of course
-were lacking, and these Parry was sent a second time to work out,
-but he added really little to geography by two seasons of hard work;
-and a third voyage, begun in May, 1824, was still more unfortunate.
-These voyages, however, enabled Parry, who was one of the greatest
-of all Arctic students and navigators, to state that the western
-sides of all northerly and southerly bodies of water are always more
-encumbered with ice than the eastern<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span> sides; and to make many most
-valuable improvements in ice navigation and equipment. His illustrated
-narratives remain among the most readable books of Arctic experience,
-and little has been added to their accounts of eastern Eskimo life and
-customs.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile (1819) another navy officer, who was ardent in the scientific
-branches of his profession, as well as distinguished in seamanship and
-naval warfare, and who had acquired Arctic experience under Buchan in
-the ill-starred expedition of 1818, was sent overland to co&ouml;perate with
-others in defining the mainland coast of America. This was Lieutenant
-John Franklin—a name destined to become the most famous of all among
-the explorers of the frozen North. For several years he and his
-parties lived and traveled among the Eskimos, tracing the coast-line
-from a considerable distance east of the mouth of the Coppermine
-River westward almost to Point Barrow, Alaska, where they came within
-one hundred and forty-six miles of meeting Beechey’s co&ouml;perative
-examination by sea from Bering’s Strait; and it was out of these trips
-that we got the valuable treatises upon the natural history of British
-America, published by his assistants, Hearne and Richardson. This ended
-in 1826.</p>
-
-<p>The next prominent expedition was that of Captain John Ross and his
-nephew James, afterward celebrated in Antarctic exploration; and it
-turned out an exceedingly productive one. Meeting fortunate conditions
-in Lancaster Sound he easily reached where the <i>Fury</i> had gone
-ashore, and refilled his ship with a portion of the stores Parry had
-thoughtfully landed and made safe there—a provision which later kept
-this expedition from destruction. Then he pressed on beyond where
-Parry had gone, and added largely to the details of his map, but
-curiously failed to recognize Bellot Strait as a thoroughfare, and so
-unaccountably missed the thing he was in search of. Ross discovered
-Boothia Felix; and during the three winters spent on its eastern shore,
-the younger Ross, by sledging, discovered Franklin Passage, Victoria
-Strait, and King William’s Land, and largely explored their coasts;
-but his most important work, “giving imperishable renown to his name,”
-as Greely declares, was the determination of the position of the north
-magnetic pole on the west coast of Boothia Felix.</p>
-
-<p>“The experiences, duration, and results of this voyage,” writes General
-A. W. Greely, “are among the most extraordinary on record. The party
-passed five years in the Arctic regions without fatality, save three
-(two from non-Arctic causes), discovered a new land, the northern
-extremity of the continent of America, and made other extensive
-geographical discoveries. Its observations are probably the most
-valuable single set ever made within the Arctic circle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_083">
-<img src="images/i_083.jpg" width="400" height="253" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">ESKIMOS IN SUMMER TENTS.</p></div>
-
-<p>During the third winter (1833) a rescuing party under Captain C. Back
-had gone from England overland in search of Ross; and recruited by
-Hudson’s Bay Company men of experience had descended Fish (or Back’s)
-River to its mouth, thus noting a new point on the map; but it failed
-to reach Ross. By similar overland journeys from their trading-posts
-on Great Slave Lake and elsewhere, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s men,
-especially Simpson, Dease, and Rae, connected various points of the
-coast, so that before 1850 it was known with substantial accuracy from
-Melville Peninsula to Bering Strait. In much the same way Russian
-sledge-travelers had traced the northern Asiatic coast by descending
-to the mouths of rivers; but no ship had yet succeeded in passing Gape
-Chelyuskin, the northernmost point of Asia or any continental land.</p>
-
-<p>Then came a period of the keenest rivalry and richest results in the
-history of polar conquest, but also one of the greatest catastrophes.
-The expeditions of Lieutenant John Franklin in 1818 and 1819 were
-spoken of a moment ago. His services then and subsequently had been
-recognized by the British king, who, among other honors, had made
-Franklin a knight, and sent him to be governor of Van Diemen’s Land
-(Tasmania), where he remained from 1836 to 1843, founded a prosperous
-colony, and was regarded as one of the wisest, kindest, and most
-upright men of his day. Upon his return to England Franklin was made
-commander of the most important expedition that had ever yet been
-fitted out to search for the Northwest Passage, and his reputation
-brought the best men as volunteers to his standard. Having selected 134
-officers and men, and made the best equipment possible, Captain Sir
-John Franklin sailed on May 19, 1845, in the <i>Erebus</i> and <i>Terror</i>,
-Parry’s old ships. On the 26th of July they were seen proceeding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
-prosperously up Baffin’s Bay by a whaler, who reported them in due
-course, but neither ships or crews were heard of again for many years.</p>
-
-<p>Anxiety over the long silence at length aroused the people of England
-and the United States to begin a search for them which lasted through
-many years. It was fruitless as to its first object,—the rescue of
-Franklin or any survivors,—but it gradually cleared up the sad mystery,
-and it was the means of learning all, and more than all, that Franklin
-sought to ascertain.</p>
-
-<p>The search began by the despatch, early in 1848, of Sir James Ross in
-two ships, <i>Investigator</i> and <i>Enterprise</i>, which wintered near the
-northeast point of North Devon, and returned the following year with no
-tidings, although they afforded the second officer, Lieutenant F. R.
-M’Clintock, an opportunity to acquire a knowledge of sledging, which
-he afterward used to advantage. This failure only aroused England to
-renewed efforts.</p>
-
-<p>Many ships were started out at once, and also parties overland, of
-which mention will be made later. The <i>Herald</i> and <i>Plover</i>, during
-1848 and 1849, scanned the whole coast from Bering Sea to the mouth of
-the Mackenzie, and discovered Herald Island. Following them, in March,
-1850, went the <i>Enterprise</i>, under Collinson, and the <i>Investigator</i>,
-under M’Clure, via Bering Strait, while the <i>Assistance</i> and
-<i>Resolute</i>, with two steam tenders, under Captain Austin, went to
-renew the search by Barrow Strait, and two brigs, the <i>Lady Franklin</i>
-and <i>Sophia</i>, under a whaling captain named Penny, followed them. The
-eastern expeditions discovered Franklin’s winter quarters of 1845-46
-at Beechey Island, but no record of any kind indicating the direction
-taken by his ships. Admirable arrangements were made for passing the
-winter, and their combined sailing and sledging work added much to the
-map of that district, and to our knowledge of life in polar latitudes,
-but it learned nothing whatever of Franklin’s fate.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_085">
-<img src="images/i_085.jpg" width="473" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A FLOATING ICE-CASTLE OF THE FROZEN NORTH.</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="line">“Out from the dark, mysterious North,</div>
-<div class="i1">With all its glamour, every night</div>
-<div class="line">Tingling with unforgotten dreams,</div>
-<div class="i1">And every day flood-full of light.”</div>
-</div></div></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>Meanwhile the expedition via Bering Sea had become separated in the
-Pacific, and M’Clure, in the <i>Investigator</i>, got so far ahead that he
-was able to pass through Bering Strait and work his way eastward north
-of British America, and through the narrow Prince of Wales Strait until
-he reached Princess Royal Islands, where he wintered. Here he was only
-thirty miles from Barrow Strait; and when he had climbed a high hill
-and saw its ice gleaming in the distance, he had in reality discovered
-the Northwest Passage. Yet he was not the first, as we now know, for
-when the survivors of Franklin’s ships, in their attempt to escape,
-had reached Cape Herschel, they, too, saw this same passage they had
-been sent to find, but then, as now, it was closed by perpetual ice,
-so that although we now know the way, we can no more avail ourselves
-of it than could they, except by going south of King William’s Land,
-through a strait of which they had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span> not yet learned. The next summer
-was spent in a fruitless struggle to get north along the western side
-of Banks (or Baring) Land, in which he succeeded only far enough to get
-frozen in so firmly on the north shore of that great island that even
-the summer warmth did not release his ship. He would have perished had
-it not been that musk-oxen were plentiful; and by the spring of 1853,
-it was plain that the <i>Investigator</i> must be abandoned.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Enterprise</i> meanwhile had followed M’Clure in the spring of 1851,
-and passed two years in searching every shore and passage she could
-find, while her men made sledge-journeys far and near, as M’Clure’s men
-were doing, and once came within a few miles of Point Victory, where
-Franklin’s remains would have been found. At last, in the spring of
-1854, she succeeded in making her way back along the American coast,
-and returned to England, completing one of the most remarkable of
-Arctic voyages.</p>
-
-<p>During their absence the friends of Franklin had not been idle. The
-apparent sacrifice of this fine character aroused almost or quite as
-much interest in America as in England, and Yankee shipmasters knew
-the north as well as did the men of England and Scandinavia. Henry
-Grinnell, a prominent merchant in New York, furnished the money to fit
-out two ships, the <i>Advance</i> and <i>Rescue</i>, commanded by Lieutenants De
-Haven and Griffiths, of the United States navy. They assisted in the
-search about Beechey Island, then struck north and discovered Grinnell
-Land, after which they returned before the winter had closed in. With
-them was a young physician and traveler, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, who
-persuaded Mr. Grinnell to send him again to the north, less to search
-for Franklin, whom he had despaired of, than to prosecute explorations
-in higher latitudes. In 1853, in command of the little brig <i>Advance</i>,
-manned principally by whaling men, he left New London, Conn., and
-made his way straight up to the head of Baffin’s Bay, which narrows
-northward into Smith Sound, where, on the eastern, or Greenland, shore
-of its expansion, since called Kane Basin, he was stopped by ice and
-remained a prisoner until rescued in 1855.</p>
-
-<p>Dr. Kane wrote the histories of these expeditions, and especially of
-the latter one, in books so charmingly expressed, and abounding in such
-novel information, that they were read like romances in every home in
-the land, and did more to fire the ardor for Arctic discovery which has
-ever since glowed in this country, than anything else that had been
-said or done. The most immediate result was that Dr. I. I. Hayes, who
-had been with Kane, took a ship to Smith Sound and spent the winter of
-1860-61 there, but with little result. More came from the expeditions
-led by an enthusiastic journalist of Cincinnati, Charles F. Hall, but
-before speaking of these, let us return to the English search for
-Franklin.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Undeterred by the failure of Austin and Penny, or the silence of
-Collinson and M’Clure, the British government in 1852 despatched again
-the four vessels used by Austin, and added a fifth, the <i>Assistance</i>,
-and a store-ship, the <i>North Star</i>, to form a dep&ocirc;t of supplies
-at Beechey Island. The old haphazard ways had given place to very
-systematic methods of advance and rescue; but steam was little employed
-as yet, because of the trouble and cost of supplying coal, although two
-small steam vessels, as tenders, accompanied this, the largest and most
-bountifully equipped expedition that had yet started out. The fleet,
-under command of Sir Edward Belcher, proceeded through Lancaster Sound,
-beyond which they scattered somewhat, and spent the first winter in
-extensive sledge-journeys, during which they discovered (by a message
-that M’Clure had left on Melville Island) where the <i>Investigator</i> was
-imprisoned, and rescued all its people in June, 1853.</p>
-
-<p>This great expedition learned nothing of Franklin, although it did
-learn much of other Arctic matters, and left the map substantially
-complete south and west of Jones Sound; but its honors rested upon
-M’Clure, who, first of all recorded men, had really made the Northwest
-Passage by sailing and sledging around the northern end of America. The
-settlement of this long-discussed matter had proved it of no practical
-value; but the British Parliament kept its word, and gave &pound;10,000 (half
-of the promised reward) to the officers and crew of the <i>Investigator</i>,
-besides raising M’Clure to knighthood. An incident of this expedition
-is the fact that Kellett’s abandoned ship <i>Resolute</i> survived crushing
-long enough to drift out through Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound and
-down into Davis Strait, where in September, 1855, she was found and
-towed home by an American whaler. As she was little injured, she was
-presented to the British government with the compliments of the United
-States, and a few years later, when she came to be broken up, a fine
-table was made from her oaken timbers, and returned as a present to
-Uncle Sam; and it now stands in the private office of the President of
-the United States in the Executive Mansion at Washington.</p>
-
-<p>Two great facts had now been ascertained. One was that none of
-Franklin’s men or ships survived. The other fact was, that although
-there was plenty of water north of the American continent, it was so
-obstructed by permanent ice that probably no vessel could ever make its
-way through from the Atlantic to the Pacific; none has done so yet,
-despite the determined effort of the steam yacht <i>Pandora</i> in 1875,
-but ships from the east have reached points also reached by ships from
-the west. The everlasting ice sheet of the polar ocean, ever crowding
-down upon this northern coast and into the channels between the islands
-north of it, forms a barrier that will very rarely, if ever, pause or
-open long enough to let a vessel through, even south<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span> of King William
-and Victoria lands. The outflowing warm waters of the rivers or other
-influences may sometimes produce a narrow space comparatively free from
-ice in summer along the shore of the continent and greater islands; but
-everywhere off shore, and never at a great distance, begins a thick
-mass of perpetual ice, which, it is believed, extends across the pole
-like a cap, and reaches on the other side nearly to Petermannland. To
-this has been given the name of the Paleocrystic Sea, or sea of ancient
-ice, and nothing is known of it beyond the blue cliffs of its margin
-that confronts the explorer as he gazes abroad from the hills of the
-Parry Islands or Banks Land, or vainly seeks in some lone vessel north
-of Alaska or Siberia to penetrate its glassy front.</p>
-
-<p>So thoroughly were the islands of this archipelago explored, and so
-unpromising seems further study, that Arctic voyagers have long ceased
-to risk their ships there, and the story of Franklin’s fate was finally
-learned by land travelers. As early as 1854 Dr. Rae and a party of
-Hudson’s Bay Company’s men had traveled over land and ice to King
-William’s Land, proved it an island, and heard stories of the death by
-famine and cold of white men who could be no other than the Franklin
-crew, as was further shown by various relics which Dr. Rae obtained
-from the Eskimos. Dr. Rae claimed and received &pound;10,000 of the reward
-offered by the British government. The next year another party, going
-down the Great Fish River, recovered many other articles from Eskimos
-at the mouth of the river and on Montreal Island. It was evident even
-then that every one had perished in an attempt, nearly successful,
-to reach the mainland at the mouth of this river. Lady Franklin,
-however, despatched an expedition in the <i>Fox</i>, under the command of the
-experienced M’Clintock, which at last brought back, not her husband,
-but the satisfaction of knowing fully his fate.</p>
-
-<p>All along the west and south coast remains of articles belonging to
-the ships were found, and skeletons—two of them in a broken boat; and
-finally in a stone cairn a written record that briefly told the tale of
-disaster.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_089">
-<img src="images/i_089.jpg" width="600" height="455" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">WORKING THROUGH AN ICE-FLOE, IN TOW OF A BERG.</p></div>
-
-<p>In 1845-46 Franklin quartered at Beechey Island, on the southeast coast
-of North Devon, after having ascended Wellington Channel to latitude
-77&deg;, and returned west of Cornwallis Island, which was an exceedingly
-successful season’s work. In the autumn of 1846 he had turned toward
-the south, but had been stopped by and frozen into the masses of ice
-that come ceaselessly down M’Clintock Channel and press upon King
-William’s Land. Had he known King William’s Land to be really an island
-he need not have exposed himself to this. During all the summer of 1847
-the ships remained firm in their icy bonds. Sir John Franklin died,
-and Captain Crozier took command. The spring of 1848 brought no hope,
-and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span> in April the ships were abandoned. The crews started southward
-along the shore, dragging two boats (one of which was soon abandoned)
-and many sledges. The Eskimos said the men dropped down one at a time,
-from weakness and hunger; but it is believed that many of them were
-killed by the savages for the sake of what few things they had with
-them—precious articles to those natives. It appears that one of the
-vessels must have been crushed in the ice, and the other stranded on
-the shore of King William’s Land, where it lay for years, forming a
-mine of wealth for the neighboring Eskimos. Some years later Lieutenant
-Schwatka and W. H. Gilder, traveling with Eskimo parties in the region
-near the mouth of the Great Fish River, found the graves of the last
-remnant of the party, and recovered still other relics of this dreadful
-calamity. Let me copy for you here the postscript, written by Crozier
-and Fitzjames, to the short record of their work. It is startlingly
-brief and impressive:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>April 25, 1848. H. M. ships <i>Terror</i> and <i>Erebus</i> were deserted on
-22nd April, five leagues N. N. W. of this [Point Victory], having
-been beset since 12th September, 1846. The officers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span> and crews,
-consisting of 105 souls under the command of Captain F. R. M.
-Crozier, landed here in lat. 69&deg; 37&acute; 42&acute;&acute; N., long. 98&deg; 41&acute; W. Sir
-John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847; and the total loss by
-deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men.
-We start on to-morrow, 26th April, 1848, for Back’s Fish River.</p></div>
-
-<p>It would be tedious to attempt to chronicle the almost yearly
-excursions into the north, but a few ought to be spoken of. One such
-has been alluded to—that of Charles Hall, a Cincinnati journalist,—who
-enlisted the aid of the American Geographical Society, and then
-prepared himself by going upon a whaler and spending the winters of
-1860-61 and 1861-1862 among the Eskimos near Cumberland Sound, where he
-found the remains of a stone house built by Frobisher in 1578. Again,
-from 1864 to 1869 he was living with the wandering Eskimo north of
-Hudson’s Bay, preparing himself to undertake an expedition which may
-be said to be the first whose avowed object was to try to reach the
-North Pole. The United States government furnished him the steamer
-<i>Polaris</i>, and a small but efficient body of scientific assistants,
-one of whom was Emil Bessels. The <i>Polaris</i> passed through Smith
-Sound, and after completing the exploration of Kennedy Channel, and
-discovering that beyond its expansion into Hall Sound it continued
-straight northeastward, forming Robeson Channel, Hall stopped his ship
-and by sledge-journeys reached Cape Brevoort, above 82&deg; N., whence
-he could see the open polar sea. This was not only far beyond any
-previous northing, but his work added immensely to our knowledge of
-both Grinnell Land and northwestern Greenland, and prepared the way for
-further successes.</p>
-
-<p>This sledge-journey was, however, too great a strain, for he had hardly
-returned to his ship when he sickened and died. The next season (1872)
-Dr. Bessels and Sergeant Mayer reached on foot 82&deg; 09&acute; N., a few miles
-farther than Hall. This accomplished, an attempt was made to return,
-but the steamer was soon inclosed in the pack, and drifted helplessly
-southward for two months, until off Northumberland Island, when a
-violent gale loosened the pack and nearly destroyed her.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>At length the danger became so great that on October 15th boats and
-provisions were put on the ice, on which nineteen of the crew had
-disembarked. Suddenly the ship broke away, and the party on the
-ice drifted slowly 195 days, and were picked up off the coast of
-Labrador, in 53&deg; 35&acute; N., by a whaling steamer 1,300 miles from where
-they had parted with the <i>Polaris</i>. The party in the ship reached
-Littleton’s Island, where they passed the winter, building two boats
-from the boards of the vessel, in which they set sail southwards in
-June, 1873. On the 23d of that month they were picked up by a Dundee
-whaler, and ultimately reached home.</p></div>
-
-<p>Only three years before that a very similar experience had happened to
-the smaller ship of a German expedition under Captain Koldewey, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
-which the larger went up the east coast of Greenland to 75&frac12;&deg; N., where
-a grim headland was named Cape Bismarck. It is just south of the land
-sighted by Lambert in 1670. The little <i>Hansa</i>, however, was crushed
-in the ice near Scoresby Sound. The crew escaped to the floe, where
-they built a house of blocks of patent fuel, filled it with provisions,
-and trusted themselves to the great Arctic current which carried them
-south, at the rate of about sixty-five miles a day at first, until
-finally, in June, 1870, it took them to the Moravian missions near Cape
-Farewell, more than twelve hundred miles from where they were wrecked.</p>
-
-<p>The seas and archipelagoes north of Europe were being questioned, all
-this time, as well as those north of America. The Norwegian fishermen
-had been familiar with Spitzbergen waters from long ago, but it was not
-until 1863 that the group was circumnavigated. The next year Captain
-Tobieson sailed around Northeast Land, and in 1870 Nova Zembla was
-circumnavigated, and the mouth of the Obi reached.</p>
-
-<p>The men who did these feats were sealers or shark-fishers in small
-stanch Norwegian schooners, which flocked in Barentz Sea at this
-period, and they furnished invaluable material, as did the whalers and
-sealers of American and Scotch ports, for the ice-pilots and crews of
-the scientific expeditions which now began to go to the north: moreover
-many of the commanders were trained by amateur service in such vessels.
-It was thus Nordenskj&ouml;ld began his experiences in 1864. Among these
-earlier expeditions was an Austrian naval lieutenant, Julius von Payer,
-who became notable, not only because he interested a new nation in
-Arctic research, but because of his discoveries. His first experience
-was with the German expedition to Greenland in 1869, and in 1871 he
-and another Austrian navy officer named Weyprecht spent the summer in
-examining the edge of the ice between Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla.</p>
-
-<p>Their observations led them to project an expedition to try again at
-that place to penetrate eastward, and effect the Northeast Passage,
-which had been regarded as hopeless for the past hundred years. The
-idea of making an Austro-Hungarian expedition of it aroused great
-enthusiasm in that empire, and Payer and Weyprecht were furnished with
-the large steamer <i>Tegethoff</i>, equipped as well as possible, with
-Weyprecht in command, while von Payer was to lead all sledge-parties.
-She reached the northern end of Nova Zembla in time to get into
-comfortable winter quarters, but instead of escaping in the spring was
-kept imprisoned in the ice, drifting steadily northward before the
-prevailing wind until, in October, land was approached, near which
-the ship again became a fixture for the winter of 1873-74. In March
-Payer began to make exploratory journeys,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span> and found that they had
-discovered a group of mountainous islands, separated by broad and deep
-channels, which he named Francis Joseph Land, in honor of the Emperor
-of Austria-Hungary.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_092">
-<img src="images/i_092.jpg" width="432" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A SUMMER SCENE OFF NOVA ZEMBLA</p></div>
-
-<p>By this time summer was approaching, when it was plain that the
-<i>Tegethoff</i> must be abandoned, and an attempt made to get home afoot.
-On the 24th of May three boats were placed on sledges, other sledges
-were loaded with provisions, and the ship’s company started on another
-one of those Arctic marches that often end at so sad a goal. Until the
-14th of August they were plodding over the ice before they reached the
-edge of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span> pack and launched their boats, in which they sailed for
-three weeks before being picked up by a Russian vessel.</p>
-
-<p>This has always been regarded as one of the greatest achievements in
-polar work of this century, not only because of the heroism and skill
-shown, and the new lands discovered, but because it promised so much
-for the future—a promise that has been largely fulfilled.</p>
-
-<p>The next important expedition was another attack upon the Northeast
-Passage, the hope of which would not “down”; and it was under the
-leadership of Professor Adolf Erik Nordenskj&ouml;ld, a Swedish geologist
-and naturalist of Stockholm, although born in Finland, who had made
-several previous journeys to Greenland, Spitzbergen, etc., which
-were fruitful of scientific results. Then he turned his attention to
-Siberia; and in 1875 and again in 1876 he sailed to the mouth of the
-Yenisei, as also Captain Wiggins of Sunderland, England, was then
-doing, in a profitable trade with the Siberians, which has been kept
-up more or less regularly ever since. These experiences convinced him
-that it was worth while to try once more to work one’s way through the
-Siberian ocean to Bering Strait.</p>
-
-<p>He obtained and outfitted the steamer <i>Vega</i>, and arranged that a
-smaller supply-steamer, the <i>Lena</i>, should accompany him as far as the
-mouth of the river Lena—a bold proposition in itself, for that was
-a thousand miles beyond the Yenisei. Nevertheless, this program was
-carried out; for leaving Gothenberg on July 4, 1878, a month later they
-were traversing the Kara Sea, and on August 19 passed Cape Chelyuskin,
-which, up to that time, had defied all attempts and has since closed
-the gate to all but the daring Nansen. A week later the mouth of the
-Lena was reached, and the little tender, unloading her coal and other
-stores into the depleted hold of the <i>Vega</i>, turned west, and actually
-sailed back to civilization uninjured.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Vega</i> then hastened on eastward, and came near getting right
-through to Bering Strait in that one season; but this was more than the
-indulgent Arctic gods could grant, and at the end of September the men
-found themselves frozen into the ice off North Cape (where Cook turned
-back in 1778), only one hundred and twenty miles from Bering Strait.
-Here they were near shore, the country was inhabited by Tchuktches—a
-nomadic people, with herds of reindeer, who take the place in Siberia
-of the Eskimos of Arctic America; and the time was well spent in
-gathering a knowledge of these people and their country, and in making
-very valuable collections in zoology and anthropology.</p>
-
-<p>It was not until July 18, 1879, however, that their prison-gates
-opened, and the <i>Vega</i> steamed on. These waters were familiar enough
-to navigators; and Nordenskj&ouml;ld proceeded straight east, passed down
-through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span> Bering Strait on the next day but one (so near was he), and
-thus easily accomplished that which had baffled men since first it had
-been tried by the unfortunate Willoughby three hundred and twenty-six
-years before.</p>
-
-<p>But though the Northeast Passage had thus been found, it was of no more
-practical value to commerce than the solving of the Northwest Passage
-had been, and the value received from the cruise was in the scientific
-information gained, the more accurate delineation of the coast, and the
-increased knowledge of winds, currents, magnetic phenomena, and the
-behavior of the floating ice-fields on that side of the polar area.
-When at last, however, the <i>Vega</i> had circumnavigated the globe by this
-extraordinary course, returning home through the Suez Canal, as no
-Arctic expedition had ever been expected to do, its commander was made
-a baron, and all his men were loaded with praises and honors, while his
-book, “The Voyage of the <i>Vega</i>,” printed in four or five languages,
-spread their fame throughout the world.</p>
-
-<p>Now while the <i>Vega</i> was drifting slowly about northeast of Siberia
-during that early summer of 1879, not only were Schwatka hunting for
-Franklin relics with the Eskimos of King William’s Land, the Danish
-Captain Jansen tracing the northeast coast of Greenland, and Dutch and
-English explorers investigating the neighborhood of Francis Joseph
-Land, but within a few leagues of Nordenskj&ouml;ld and his men there
-was beginning one of the most dreadful of those tragedies that have
-seared with suffering the track of Arctic exploration since men began
-to pry into the secrets of the frozen North: I mean the story of the
-<i>Jeannette</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Many readers of this book will easily remember the intense interest
-which the starting of this expedition created in the United States, for
-it was organized at the suggestion and expense of James Gordon Bennett,
-the proprietor of the New York <i>Herald</i>. The government co&ouml;perated,
-however, lending from its navy the officers and men needful, and
-otherwise aiding the project. The vessel itself was the steam yacht
-<i>Pandora</i>, which had been proved a worthy craft by Sir Allen Young in
-his search for the magnetic pole in 1875, and which Mr. Bennett had
-bought and rechristened.</p>
-
-<p>Supplied with everything science and experience could suggest, the
-<i>Jeannette</i> sailed from San Francisco on July 8, 1879, and missing the
-incoming <i>Vega</i> among the fogs of Bering Sea, passed through into the
-Siberian ocean, bound poleward. The last report of her was that she had
-been seen September 3d steaming toward Wrangell Land, which had been
-sighted by American whalers in 1867, and was generally regarded as of
-continental extent northward. It is now known that De Long intended to
-reach it and winter there; but to his dismay he could not escape from
-the ice-pack, and to his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span> astonishment found himself drifting past
-the northern margin of Wrangell Land, thus proving it an island about
-seventy miles long.</p>
-
-<p>When two years had passed and no tidings had been received, the
-United States government equipped a search expedition in the steamer
-<i>Rodgers</i>, commanded by Lieutenant Berry, which in 1881 reached
-and examined Wrangell Land, and then went north farther even than
-Collinson, reaching 73&deg; 44&acute;, the highest point yet attained immediately
-north of Bering Strait, where the paleocrystic ice spreads much farther
-from the pole than on the American side. But he found no trace of
-the <i>Jeannette</i>, and himself had a hard time getting home, for the
-<i>Rodgers</i> was burned in her winter quarters.</p>
-
-<p>What then had befallen the lost vessel? She had become beset in the ice
-and drifted with the pack around the north end of Wrangell Island, and
-then west, until at the end of twenty-two months she had been crushed,
-and sunk on June 12, 1881, in latitude 77&deg; 15&acute; N., and longitude 155
-E. Two small islands, named Jeannette and Henrietta, had been visited
-some distance east of the scene of the catastrophe; but when the crews,
-saving themselves and what little they could on the ice, started to
-drag their boats and sledges homeward, they headed directly south, and
-soon found a new island, named Bennett, which is the northernmost of
-the New Siberia group.</p>
-
-<p>It would be a sad task, were it possible, to relate here the frightful
-hardships of that journey through the fast-gathering Arctic night
-toward the bleak coast of Siberia. Having passed the islands, open
-water was found, and the starving men embarked in their three boats for
-the mouth of the Lena; but soon they were separated in a storm, and
-each one proceeded as best he could. One boat foundered in the first
-gale. Another, in charge of Melville (now engineer-in-chief, U. S. N.),
-reached an eastern mouth of the river and ascended it to a Russian
-village. A third boat, with De Long and others, also reached the Lena
-delta, but only two seamen were able to proceed afoot to Bulun, a
-far-away Russian settlement. Melville heard of this, and made haste to
-start out searching parties, but they were too late. De Long and his
-crew had died of exhaustion, and it was not until the next season that
-their bodies and records were fully recovered.</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, as we are assured by experts, the results of this
-unfortunate expedition were important, physically and geographically.
-“They covered some 50,000 square miles of polar ocean, and clearly
-indicate the conditions of an equal area between their line of drift
-and the Asiatic coast.” De Long believed the Siberian ocean to be
-a shallow sea, dotted with islands; and his conclusions have been
-confirmed by the admirable scientific work since of Toll, Bunge, and
-other Europeans who have explored the Liachoff Islands and other places
-in that part of the Arctic realm.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The desire for scientific study of the polar world had now become the
-motive for northern research, though men were still ambitious to reach
-the pole; and when Sir George Nares returned from the great British
-expedition of 1875, to tell how the men of the <i>Alert</i> had reached a
-wintering-point beyond Robeson Channel, on the west coast of Greenland,
-in latitude 82&deg; 27&acute; N., and that Markham and a sledge-party had gone
-about one degree farther (to 83&deg; 20&acute; 26&acute;&acute; N.), greater pride was felt
-in this fact, perhaps, than in the careful observations and collections
-that the ships had made. This remained the advance record until the
-memorable feat of Lieutenant Lockwood of the American Greely expedition
-eight years later.</p>
-
-<p>This expedition was one of several acting in concert, according to
-a scheme suggested by Weyprecht, and perfected at international
-congresses of interested men meeting at Hamburg in 1879 and at St.
-Petersburg in 1882. This plan was for the establishment by various
-governments of a ring of stations as far within the Arctic circle as
-practicable, where simultaneous daily observations of the weather,
-magnetic conditions, tides, currents, etc., might be made. The
-arrangement was begun in the summer of 1883, and observing stations
-were established by Austria on Jan Mayen Island; by Denmark at
-Godthaab, Greenland; by Germany on Cumberland Bay, west of Davis
-Straits; by Great Britain at Great Slave Lake, Canada; by Holland at
-the mouth of the Yenisei; by Norway at Alten Fjiord, Norway; by Russia
-at the mouth of the Lena, and on Nova Zembla; by Sweden on Spitzbergen;
-and by the United States at Point Barrow, Alaska, and, farthest north
-of all, Lady Franklin Bay, Greenland. Nothing need be said about most
-of these stations—all were successful except the Dutch; but to the
-last-named belongs a story that Americans will not forget.</p>
-
-<p>The command of the Lady Franklin Bay Station was assigned to Lieutenant
-A. W. Greely—not a naval lieutenant, but, like Schwatka, a cavalry
-officer, then assigned to duty in the Signal Service, to which (because
-it then supervised the Weather Bureau) the government had intrusted
-this matter. A steamer easily conveyed Greely and his party to Lady
-Franklin Bay, and left them there with a good house ready to be set
-up, and supplies of all sorts for two years. The prescribed series of
-observations with barometers and thermometers, wind-gages, tide-gages,
-magnetic instruments and all the rest, were at once begun, and two
-winters passed comfortably enough. Dogs and Eskimo drivers had been
-obtained, and several journeys were made, of which the most important
-was Lockwood’s advance toward the pole, of which an account has
-been succinctly supplied by General Greely himself in his admirable
-“Handbook of Arctic Discoveries.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_097">
-<img src="images/i_097.jpg" width="600" height="479" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SCENERY OF GRINNELL LAND AND THE ARCTIC SEA.</p></div>
-
-<p>Lieutenant J. B. Lockwood, one of the principal assistants, who had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span>
-already displayed great skill and energy in sledging, even in prolonged
-temperature as low as 81&deg; F. below freezing, undertook a long exploring
-trip up the Greenland coast, to or beyond Cape Britannia. A large
-party went with him at first, but gradually men were sent back, after
-establishing supply-depots. “The journey onward was marked by severe
-storms, rough ice, broken sledges, snow-blindness, minor injuries,
-and—worst of all for loaded sledges—soft, deep snow.” At last, some
-distance north of Cape Bryant, all turned back except Lockwood,
-Sergeant Brainard, and an Eskimo, Christiansen, who, with twenty-five
-days’ rations, pushed on. In five and one half days they had reached
-Cape Britannia—the farthest north of the Nares expedition—82&deg; 20&acute;
-N. Halting here only long enough to study the landscape from its
-summit, and make sure of the remarkable fact that this northern end
-of Greenland is free from the ice-cap, whose northern limit is about
-lat. 82&deg; N., they rounded a cape, and crossing channel after channel
-filled with ice, which showed that all this district is an archipelago,
-reached on May 10th Mary Murray Island, 83&deg; 19&acute; N. “A violent gale
-delayed them sixty-three hours, the cold exhausting them physically<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>
-and the delay mentally. If weather forbade travel, life must be
-sustained; but they tasted insufficient food only at intervals of
-fifteen, twenty-four, and nineteen hours—the last as clearing weather
-made progress possible. Floes so high that the sledge was lowered by
-dog-traces, ice so broken that the ax cleared the way, and widening
-water-cracks in increasing numbers impeded progress. But, despite all
-obstacles, they reached, May 13, 1882, Lockwood Island, 83&deg; 24&acute; N.,
-42&deg;, 45&acute; W., the farthest of their journey, and the highest north [by
-land], then or now.”</p>
-
-<p>They could see land several miles northeast, which they named Cape
-Washington, the highest known land, and toward the north could overlook
-a polar sea to within three hundred and fifty miles of the pole. Even
-here plants were numerous, and foxes, hares, lemmings, and ptarmigans
-existed. The three heroic travelers returned safely, reaching
-headquarters on June 3d. Another expedition by Lockwood and his two
-companions explored and located the west coast of mountainous and
-glacier-girt Grinnell Land, where the musk-ox and Eskimo hunters range
-to the northern border.</p>
-
-<p>The summer of 1883 brought no relief-ship, and the plan of escape must
-be put into execution at once. A ship had, in fact, tried to reach
-Greely in 1882, but, failing, had left supplies of provisions at Cape
-Sabine and elsewhere. In 1883 another relief expedition sent north was
-dreadfully mis-managed, and finally the ship itself was lost, and,
-instead of leaving supplies, took away all that had been stored at Cape
-Sabine—the precise point where they were to be needed.</p>
-
-<p>Leaving Lady Franklin Bay in August in open boats, the party managed,
-after desperate exertions, to get near Cape Sabine, and safely landed
-on Bedford Pim Island, on the northwestern shore of Smith Sound,
-October 15, 1883. Of the misery that followed, let Greely himself tell
-us:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Winter had begun, the polar night was imminent, clothing in rags,
-fuel wanting, and forty days’ rations must tide over 250 days, till
-help could come. The main party put up a hut of rocks, canvas, boat-
-and snow-slabs, while selected men scoured the coasts for caches,
-sought land-game, and watched seal-holes, until utter darkness drove
-all to the hut. Scientific observations were unremittingly made,
-amusements devised, a spring campaign planned, and the returning
-sun found only one dead. Efforts to cross Smith Sound failed, and
-a hunting trip to the west found a new (Schley) land, but no game.
-Finally game came so inadequately that food failed, and one by one
-men died—Jens seal-hunting, and Rice striving to bring in a cache.
-Courage and solidarity continued; and if Greely gave to the maimed
-Ellison double food while it lasted, he did not hesitate to order
-in writing the execution of a man serving under an assumed name of
-Henry, who repeatedly stole sealskin thongs, the only remaining
-food. Flowers, plants, seaweed, and lichens eked out life for the
-six, till June 22, 1884, when the relief-ships, <i>Thetis</i> and <i>Bear</i>,
-under Captain W. S. Schley and Commander W. H. Emory, rescued them.
-Records, instruments, and collections were saved to tell the story
-of an expedition that failed not in aught intrusted to it, and whose
-members perished through others.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span></p>
-
-<p>To another piece of brilliant work, that of Lieutenant R. E. Peary, U.
-S. N., I can give only a few words, because, like so much else that
-might be said of Arctic researches, it was by land rather than by
-sea. By extraordinary courage, skill, and endurance, he twice crossed
-northern Greenland, showed that it is an island having a northern shore
-free from inland ice in about 82&deg; north latitude, and made stronger
-Greely’s conclusion that the lands visited and seen by Lockwood, north
-of Cape Britannia, are detached islands. Peary’s work may be said to
-have completed the map of the continental boundary of the Arctic Ocean,
-but he is still busy there.</p>
-
-<p>Of Nansen, on the contrary, I ought to say as much as I can, because
-his extraordinary voyage in the <i>Fram</i> was perhaps more purely
-an examination of the Arctic <i>Sea</i> than any other ever made. Dr.
-Fridtjoff Nansen was a young Norwegian who had already made his mark
-in Greenland, where, soon after 1880, articles began to be found that
-had belonged to the <i>Jeannette</i>, and apparently must have drifted
-thence from where she was lost off Siberia. This was only a part of the
-indications that convinced Dr. Nansen that a current flowed across the
-unknown polar space from the neighborhood of Alaska to the northeast
-coast of Greenland, and thence became the great Arctic current that we
-recognize south of Iceland. He argued that if a vessel could find this
-current north of eastern Siberia, she would be moved with it until she
-emerged into the Atlantic. Incidentally she might drift directly over
-the pole.</p>
-
-<p>With this in view, he raised funds to build and equip a small wooden
-vessel, furnished with both steam and sails, which was so shaped by
-the roundness of her bottom, and so amazingly braced and strengthened
-within, that before any “nips” of the ice would crush her, the pressure
-would lift her out of water—as, in fact, happened many times in the
-course of her wonderful excursion. Nansen chose twelve companions,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">3</a>
-and though some of them were educated men of science, others skilful
-sea-captains, and others common sailors, all lived and worked together
-in one cabin as brothers—the happiest and healthiest lot of men that
-ever ventured into the hyperborean kingdom of desolation.</p>
-
-<p>Leaving Norway in July, 1893, he struggled through the Kara Sea,
-and it was not until late in September, 1894, that he found himself
-permanently frozen into the great polar pack, north of the New Siberian
-Islands; but even then he was neither so far north nor so far west as
-he hoped to get, and feared that he was south of his supposed current.
-For the story of the strange life led by those thirteen men on that
-drifting ship, safe, abundantly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span> provisioned, dry, warm, lighted by
-electricity (power for the dynamos being gained by a windmill), I can
-only refer you to Dr. Nansen’s book, “Farthest North,” one of the
-most interesting Arctic volumes ever penned. Turning, zigzagging, now
-advancing and again retreating as the constantly moving ice swayed here
-and there under the pressure of wind or the dragging of currents, they
-nevertheless made a gradual progress westward.</p>
-
-
-<p>By March they had reached a point near the crossing of the 70th
-meridian and 85th parallel, and were still fixed in the ice. Then
-Nansen, taking with him Lieutenant Johansen, started north by
-dog-sledges, in an attempt to reach the pole. They could take very few
-supplies of any sort, and how far north they would be able to travel
-must depend upon their ability to return, not to the <i>Fram</i>, which
-would drift on, but to the islands of Francis Joseph Land, far away
-south. The ice, bad at first, grew worse as they proceeded, being one
-long stretch of hummocks and jagged ditches, with now and then a lane
-of open water around which they would toil in misery only to find a
-worse one ahead. On April 7th it became certain that they must turn
-back. This was “farthest north,” indeed—just above the 86th degree,
-hardly 275 miles from the North Pole. Then it was a race against death
-by cold, or drowning, or starvation. One by one the dogs were killed to
-furnish food for the remainder. At last, after almost superhuman labors
-and thrilling escapes from freezing and drowning and the attacks of
-famished bears, they reached Francis Joseph Land, and spent a winter in
-a hut made out of stones, earth, and raw walrus hides. The next spring
-they plodded on, and by good chance found the camp of the Jackson
-Harmsworth surveying party (which a few days later would have gone away
-in its steamer), by whom Nansen and Johansen were carried to Norway in
-August, 1896.</p>
-
-<p>A week later the <i>Fram</i> came in, with every one well and hearty, having
-emerged from the ice just northwest of Spitzbergen.</p>
-
-<p>Since Nansen’s return another Scandinavian, S. A. Andr&eacute;e, with two
-companions, has disappeared into this same desert of ice and silence,
-in a balloon carrying a boat, sledge, tent, and various supplies.
-It was his intention to reach the pole if possible, and to do
-whatever else circumstances permitted. Since his departure, on July
-10, 1897, from Spitzbergen, he has not been heard from, except by a
-pigeon-message two days later.</p>
-
-<p class="center">THE SOUTH POLE</p>
-
-<p>We have followed up to date the history of adventurous and scientific
-exploration of the hardly yielding, yet steadily narrowed, circles
-of unknown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span> coasts and waters about the North Pole. Let us now see
-what, thus far, has been done to wrest from the ocean and ice of its
-Antarctic antipodes the secrets of the South Pole.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_101">
-<img src="images/i_101.jpg" width="600" height="380" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A PENGUIN-ROOST ON THE BEACHES OF VICTORIA LAND.<br />
-
-<span class="smallest">Drawn by the Antarctic explorer Borchgrevink.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>Almost three hundred years ago the existence of islands far to the
-southward of any continents became known to navigators, who were driven
-thither by bad weather, and little by little was added to the map of
-this desolate region; but it was not until 1772 that any one went into
-that terrible Antarctic sea for the express purpose of a survey. This
-man was the intrepid Captain Cook, and though he sailed a third of the
-way around the globe in his efforts to find an entrance through the icy
-barrier, he could never penetrate beyond 71&deg; south latitude, which is
-equal to North Cape, or the town of Upernavik, in the Arctic region.
-Later captains did little better, until 1841, when Sir James Ross, in
-his ships <i>Erebus</i> and <i>Terror</i>,—the same vessels which afterward met
-their destruction with the ill-fated Franklin expedition,—skirted the
-edge of the thick ice that everywhere clothed the land, though it was
-midsummer, and finally reached the base of the southernmost land yet
-known on the globe—a magnificent mountain-chain stretching away to the
-south from latitude 78&deg; 10&acute;.</p>
-
-<p>The most conspicuous point of all this range of polar mountains, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
-rises from an unexplored continent or great island called Victoria
-Land, is the volcano Mt. Erebus. It was in eruption at the time of
-Ross’s visit, and the explorer tries to tell us of the splendor of its
-display when the wide glistening waste of snow and the deep blue of
-the ocean and the starry sky are lit up by the column of fire hurled
-thousands of feet heavenward from its crater: but who can picture the
-grandeur of such a scene! This volcano is about 12,400 feet high, and
-an extinct neighbor, Mt. Terror, is still higher; while a third peak,
-Mt. Melbourne, exceeds 15,000 feet in altitude, and like all the rest
-is covered with everlasting snow and glaciers from the tempestuous
-water’s edge to its lonely crest.</p>
-
-<p>Meager as this information is, it is about all we know of the surface
-of the globe within the Antarctic circle; and it will be extremely
-difficult to learn much more. In a latitude much farther from the
-pole than that where in the north vegetation is abundant, and men and
-animals live all the year round, the severity of the Antarctic climate
-cuts off all life, and constantly seals the water under a cap of ice.
-The coasts and outlying islands thus far examined appear to be wholly
-volcanic, often composed of nothing but alternate layers of ashes
-and ice; but the <i>Challenger</i> staff dredged up from the edge of the
-ice south of the middle of the Indian Ocean pieces of granite-like
-and other rocks, such as belong to land regularly formed; so that
-probably the whole uplift does not consist of volcanic materials; and,
-furthermore, rocks containing fossil plants have been found on some of
-the southernmost islands which show that in past ages—the period of
-the coal deposits—the climate of that end of the world was mild enough
-to support forests of trees and, doubtless, a large variety of herbage
-and animals. Now most of the coast is unapproachable on account of a
-border of sea-ice, or else cliffs of moving land-ice (glaciers) that
-give off the flat, table-topped icebergs characteristic of the south
-polar waters. No trace of any land animal—except visiting sea-fowl—has
-been found, and only a little of the simplest plants (lichens); nor is
-this surprising when we learn that the highest noonday heat of summer
-is only a little above the freezing-point.</p>
-
-<p>Why this intense cold and dreadful desolation exists so much farther
-from the pole in the southern than in the northern hemisphere, I need
-hardly explain to you; for you will recall that in the north the
-continents are so broad as to form almost an unbroken wall about the
-narrow polar sea, confining its cold waters, warming the air by wide
-radiation, and guiding the heated flood of the Gulf Stream straight
-into the northern sea. In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand,
-an immense breadth of ocean south of latitude 40&deg; is broken by no
-land of any account, and the southward flowing warm water from the
-equator becomes spread out so thin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span> upon the vast surface that it is
-rapidly chilled. It is now generally believed, as has been hinted,
-that the south polar region is a continental mass, deeply buried in an
-ice-sheet that is ever fed in the center as fast as it wastes away at
-the circumference; for the prevailing winds there tend toward the pole
-from all sides, and carry loads of moisture to be condensed and fall in
-ceaseless snows.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_103">
-<img src="images/i_103.jpg" width="600" height="428" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">ICE-CLIFFS AND TABLE-TOPPED BERGS, CHARACTERISTIC OF THE
-ANTARCTIC REGION.</p></div>
-
-<p>The Antarctic seas, however, are by no means lifeless, but abound not
-only in fishes,—cod are said to throng in these waters in prodigious
-numbers,—but several varieties of whales, dolphins, and their kin
-(which will be described in one of the later chapters), and many kinds
-of seals, notably the huge sea-elephant, now becoming rare elsewhere.
-Then, too, the Antarctic islands and headlands are the resort of
-enormous flocks of certain sea-birds, all different from the Arctic
-species of their families, which subsist upon the fishes and less
-creatures in the water, and go to the lonely shores outside the ice-cap
-only for rest and to make their nests. Of all these the penguins are
-most numerous and most hardy, and a whole chapter might easily be given
-to their quaint appearance and quainter ways. It also<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span> appears probable
-that certain migratory birds—especially beach-feeding kinds—regularly
-visit the Antarctic continent in summer from Patagonia, and breed there.</p>
-
-<p class="padt1">Now what has been gained by all the expense, exertion, and hardship
-of polar exploration? What has been the charm that has led wise and
-brave men to overcome terrific obstacles, and turn again with deeper
-and deeper longings toward the mystic icy regions? Lieutenant Maury has
-given one answer: “There icebergs are framed and glaciers launched.
-There the tides have their cradle: the whales their nursery. There
-the winds complete their circuits, and the currents of the sea their
-round in the wonderful system of interoceanic circulation. There the
-Aurora Borealis is lighted up, and the trembling needle brought to
-rest; and there, too, in the mazes of that mystic circle, terrestrial
-forces of occult power and vast influence upon the well-being of man
-are continually at play.... Noble daring has made Arctic ice and waters
-classic ground. It is no feverish excitement nor vain ambition that
-leads man there. It is a higher feeling, a holier motive, a desire
-to look into the works of creation, to comprehend the economy of our
-planet, and to grow wiser and better by the knowledge.”</p>
-
-<p>To polar explorers we owe not only the discovery of the waters,
-coasts, and archipelagoes that now are accurately outlined upon our
-maps within the Arctic and Antarctic circles, but vast and valuable
-products—whale-fisheries, seal-fisheries, cod-fisheries, and many other
-additions to the wealth of the world from the sea, while the Arctic
-lands have yielded furs and other valuable things in great quantity.
-The study of the people living under those adverse northern conditions
-has been highly instructive, assisting us to reconstruct the life in
-the primitive world; and what we have learned from the records of
-the Arctic rocks has thrown a bright and unexpected light upon the
-antiquity of the globe.</p>
-
-<p>To studies of the ocean and atmosphere in very high latitudes science
-is largely indebted for new facts in magnetism, in the movements of
-the air and causes of climate, in the formation and behavior of ice
-and icebergs, in the action of tides and ocean-currents, and in many
-other departments of knowledge, all of which have been made of use
-especially to the navigator. Nor has this cost over much. Attention
-has been called to every casualty, and the romantic light of adventure
-has brought into high relief all the hardships and sometimes horrors
-of Arctic experience; but the records show that the average of loss
-and suffering in Arctic work is not greater than that of ordinary
-seafaring and naval careers. Sir Leopold M’Clintock has stated publicly
-that during the thirty-six years when Great Britain was most active<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>
-in polar research, she lost only one expedition and 128 persons
-out of forty-two successive expeditions sent out, and never lost a
-sledge-party out of a hundred that made overland journeys.</p>
-
-<p>After all, no doubt, the best result has been the human heroism
-displayed, and the human sympathy developed. “There are,” exclaims
-Professor Nourse, “and ever will be, fair fruits born out of such acts
-of high aspiration, energy, and fortitude, in those who have gone out,
-and in their liberal supporters; exemplars for the lifting up of the
-discouraged, the education of the young. Certainly volunteers for the
-paths of discovery will offer themselves until the fullest additions to
-the domain of science have had their ingathering.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_105">
-<img src="images/i_105.jpg" width="600" height="474" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">EAGER TO BE FIRST ASHORE IN A NEW LAND.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_106">
-<img src="images/i_106.jpg" width="406" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption"><span class="smallest">DRAWN BY HOWARD PYLE.</span> <span class="smallest add3em">ENGRAVED BY M. HAIDER.</span><br />
-THE “CONSTITUTION’S” LAST FIGHT.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES</span></h2></div>
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_I_WOODEN">PART I—WOODEN WALLS, FROM SALAMIS TO TRAFALGAR</h3>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_107.jpg" width="75" height="74" alt="ornate capital N" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">Naval</span> warfare, properly speaking, begins with the battle of Salamis,
-480 <span class="smcap">B. C.</span>, when the Greek fleet, under the guidance of
-Themistocles, destroyed or put to flight a horde of twelve hundred
-Persian vessels, and saved Athens, to become the foundation of a strong
-nation.</p>
-
-<p>Of these ships at Salamis we know very little, except that they were
-large, open, or partly open, rowboats, having platforms at the stern
-and prow, and perhaps amidships in some cases, where soldiers might
-stand and discharge their arrows out of the way of the rowers beneath
-them, or leap aboard the enemy’s boats whenever they could be reached.
-They were, in short, early types of the galleys which subsequently
-became vessels of war as powerful and serviceable, under the conditions
-they were intended to meet, as are our battle-ships to-day, and
-probably safer as a fighting-place for their crews.</p>
-
-<p>That from rowboats rather than from sail-boats should have been
-developed the highest type of Mediterranean war-vessel of ancient times
-is not surprising when one remembers the light and variable winds of
-that region, the usually smooth seas, the abundance of harbors, and,
-above all, the need of having the vessels under complete control when
-all fighting had to be done at short range—chiefly by ramming and
-boarding, in fact. It must be remembered, too, that labor was cheap;
-and it was considered that the most proper and economical—not to say
-humane—use to which prisoners of war could be put was to make them
-rowers in public ships, while enough remained to be sold as slaves to
-the owners of private yachts and privateering galleys. One may imagine
-a worse fate than this.</p>
-
-<p>The earliest war-vessels of the eastern Mediterranean—those of Homer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>’s
-time, for instance—seem to have been long and rather narrow rowboats,
-the best of which had two tiers of oars, one above the other, the
-lower, shorter tier working through oval holes in the side, and the
-upper in notches or thole-pins on the gunwale. This left the upper
-rowers exposed, and hence such vessels were called <i>aphract</i>, or
-“unfenced”; and it was not until the Greeks began to become prominent
-that the bulwarks were raised high enough to protect all the rowers,
-and war-vessels generally became <i>cataphract</i>, or “fenced.”</p>
-
-<p>It appears that in very early times war-ships (<i>biremes</i>) with not
-only two tiers or banks of oars, but even those (<i>triremes</i>) with
-three banks, were used; and the trireme became the type of the most
-numerous and effective vessels of the Greek and Roman navies in their
-prime. And as weight and power gradually increased, the crushing power
-of collision began to be utilized, and ramming came in as a more and
-more important feature in naval tactics. As the Greeks seem to have
-first applied these new ideas, it is quite likely that their success at
-Salamis was due to these improvements. The arrangement was this:</p>
-
-<p>From the side of the vessel (inside) projected three rows of benches, a
-yard apart, horizontally supported at their inner ends by timbers that
-slanted toward the stern at such an angle that the top seat of each row
-was exactly above the bottom seat of the row behind it. The oars of
-the top tier (<i>thranite</i>) were about fourteen feet long, those of the
-middle tier (<i>zygite</i>) about ten and one half feet, and the lowermost
-one (<i>thalamite</i>) seven and one half feet. Each oar was so nearly
-balanced in its oar-port as to work in the easiest manner, tied there
-by a thong and surrounded by a loose sleeve of leather which kept out
-the water. Each one of the lowermost oars was worked by a single man,
-the middle ones by two, and those of the third tier by three or four,
-as they were of great length.</p>
-
-<p>In later times larger vessels were invented for special
-purposes—four-banked (<i>quadriremes</i>), five-banked (<i>quinquiremes</i>),
-and so on, even up to one of forty banks; but as we are unable to
-understand how it was possible for more than five or six tiers of oars
-to be operated, we may leave these extraordinary galleys to special
-students.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">4</a></p>
-
-<p>The structure of these vessels gave them the greatest strength
-combined with lightness. They had very strong keels and stems, the
-latter peculiarly braced; and along their sides ran waling-pieces, or
-fore-and-aft bracing timbers, the lowermost curving inward forward,
-until they met in front of the stem at the water-line, where they were
-braced by massive timbers, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>and prolonged into a sharp three-toothed
-spur, of which the middle tooth was the longest, reaching out perhaps
-ten feet. This was covered with metal, usually bronze, and formed the
-<i>beak</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“Above it, but projecting less beyond the stem-post, was the
-<i>procmbolion</i>, or second beak, in which the prolongation of the upper
-set of waling-pieces met. This was generally fashioned into the figure
-of a ram’s head, also covered with metal.... These bosses, when a
-vessel was rammed, completed the work of destruction begun by the sharp
-beak at the water-level, giving a racking blow which caused it to heel
-over and so eased it off the beak, releasing the latter before the
-weight of the sinking vessel could come upon it.”</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_109">
-<img src="images/i_109.jpg" width="400" height="308" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">HAMILCAR’S “STAIRWAY OF THE GALLEYS,” AT CARTHAGE.</p></div>
-
-<p>The stem was often carried up into a curving ornament called the
-<i>acrostolion</i>, beneath which was a stout-walled deck-space for sailors
-or the fighting-men to do their work; and the stern-post similarly
-supported a lofty, richly ornamented structure (<i>aplustron</i>), arching
-over the officers’ quarters.</p>
-
-<p>Platforms extended up and down the center of the ship between the
-rowers; and over their heads was a deck having walls or bulwarks where
-the fighting-men and their various “engines” stood. In addition to
-this an external defended gallery for soldiers and boarders usually
-ran along the outside of the bulwarks above the oars; and awnings of
-rawhide were stretched over all to ward off grappling-irons.</p>
-
-<p>It must not be forgotten, however, that these galleys also had three
-pole-masts, and certain sails—probably a huge split lug, with possibly
-a square topsail on the mainmast, while the fore- and mizzenmasts
-carried lateens. At the top of each stick was a round, protected cage
-filled with archers and slingers—the prototype of our “military mast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>.”</p>
-
-<p>Nor are the size and force of these Greek and Roman men-of-war to be
-despised. The ordinary trireme had a crew of 200 to 225 men in all, 174
-of whom were rowers. The space for cabins and stowage must have been
-little, but this was of small account, since the war-galleys rarely
-undertook long cruises, their tactics being a rush and a sharp fight,
-and then a quick return to harbor, where it was the practice to draw
-the lighter galleys up on shore each night. The transportation of the
-ships across the isthmus of Corinth was not, then, so astonishing a
-feat as it is sometimes called.</p>
-
-<p>Rome’s experience, however, gained in war and in suppressing the
-Levantine pirates, taught her to abandon the heavy, many-banked,
-unwieldy vessels she had at first developed from Greek and Carthaginian
-models, and to trust to a much lighter, swifter, and more manageable
-style, with far less upper structure and rigging, and having only two
-banks of oars. These were called Liburnian galleys. With this change
-came naturally one of tactics, capture by chase and boarding taking the
-place of the earlier attempt to crush by ramming and overriding the
-antagonist.</p>
-
-<p>The armament comprised not only as many soldiers with bows and javelins
-as could find room in action, but various machines of offense and
-defense, such as catapults hurling huge stones or marble grape-shot,
-spearheaded rams or huge knives that could be run out against an
-enemy’s hull or rigging, arrangements for smashing the enemy’s decks,
-caldrons swung at yard-arms, holding burning pitch or oil to be poured
-upon the foe, and often cranes (<i>corvi</i>), provided with grapples that,
-if one could be made fast, would lift an adversary out of water, and
-turn him upside down. No more vivid picture of the life in cruise and
-battle of a Roman man-of-war’s man is known to me than that penned by
-General Lew Wallace in “Ben Hur,” but I cannot, of course, transfer
-all of it to my pages, as I should like to do, and an extract here and
-there would only spoil the pleasure in store for you in re-reading it
-all.</p>
-
-<p>Of medieval naval warfare in the Mediterranean, the struggles between
-the weak “principalities and powers” that followed the decay of Rome
-and lasted for a dozen centuries, we know very little. There is more
-obscurity here than even elsewhere in the dim history of the dark
-ages. It is evident, however, that not much change took place in naval
-architecture. The Byzantine empire succeeded to Rome as mistress of the
-seas, and we know that in the ninth century the Byzantine emperors were
-still building biremes (then called <i>dromones</i>) armed with tubes for
-spouting Greek fire. It should be noted that boats having only a single
-bank of oars came now to be called galleys; and this is the first and
-proper use of the word, though popularly it is now (or until recently
-was) applied to any large many-oared boat.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_111">
-<img src="images/i_111.jpg" width="600" height="369" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A COMBAT OF ROMAN GALLEYS (BIREMES).</p></div>
-
-<p>With the introduction of gunpowder and cannon into naval vessels,
-the ornamental top-works—a picturesque relic of which remains in the
-Venetian gondola of to-day—disappeared, as we see when the clear
-light of history begins to shine on the fleets of Venice and Genoa,
-when these cities were leaders of the world in navigation. Turkey—the
-successor of the old Byzantine empire and of the Greek power—was
-then, as now, the great enemy of the west, but in those days it was
-aggressive. Its fleets were strong and well manned, and they threatened
-to cross the Adriatic and fasten the baneful grasp of the Moslem upon
-Italy in revenge for the persecution of the Moors in Spain. Perhaps
-they would have done so had not John of Austria, admiral of the
-allied navies of Spain, Venice, and Rome, won that great victory in
-the harbor of Lepanto, near the isthmus of Corinth, which destroyed
-nearly the whole Turkish fleet, and released fifteen thousand Christian
-galley-slaves. This was in October, 1571, and it saved the West from
-being overrun by the barbarous East, as exactly fifteen and a half
-centuries before it had been saved near Actium, a famous promontory on
-the northwestern coast of Greece, where Octavius defeated the forces of
-Antony and Cleopatra.</p>
-
-<p>It is doubtful whether the ships that fought in the later battle
-were much different in either build or rig from those of the earlier
-conflict, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span> their decks no more gleamed with men in armor, and in
-place of catapult, crane, and caldron were cannonades and falconets,
-arquebuses and hand-grenades. Perhaps, however, they had already taken
-on more of that long, low shape characterizing later the French and
-Italian galleys, common enough in Mediterranean ports up to about one
-hundred years ago, which differed mainly from the ancient ones in their
-use of much longer oars or sweeps, balanced upon a sort of extended
-outrigger or shelf projecting from the vessel’s side. The galleass of
-which we hear in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was a large
-war-ship of this style, which foreshadowed the Atlantic ships, to be
-spoken of presently, in having castellated structures fore and aft,
-in which were mounted sometimes twenty guns; besides its two or three
-lateen-rigged masts, it often had thirty-two sweeps on each side, each
-about forty-five feet long, and handled with a long, slow stroke by
-five or six men—in France mainly convicts “condemned to the galleys.”<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">5</a></p>
-
-<p>Such vessels continued to be used by the Spaniards, Maltese, Italians,
-and Turks long after they had been abandoned by the French navy,
-but latterly, after the suppression of piracy, in which they were
-of especial service, for the conveyance of important personages and
-occasions of ceremony rather than for practical service; and in the
-state barge of the Doge of Venice, brought out annually to this day
-at the ceremony of re-wedding Venice to the Adriatic, we have a
-magnificent relic of these stately craft.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_112">
-<img src="images/i_112.jpg" width="300" height="258" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">TYPE OF VENETIAN GALLEY.</p></div>
-
-<p>But such boats were adapted only to the comparatively calm and simple
-navigation of the Mediterranean; and although imitated in the similar
-waters of the eastern Baltic, they never flourished north of Spain.
-When they gradually disappeared, their successor inside the gates of
-Gibraltar was the xebec, which began to appear under Arab or Spanish
-control in the seventeenth century; this was supposed to be able to
-withstand any weather, and carried from fourteen to twenty-two guns
-on deck, with small ports for oars between the guns. A picturesque
-relative was the Portuguese muleta.</p>
-
-<p>The English liked this kind of vessel on account of its strong sailing
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
-qualities, but when they took it
-into their own stormy waters they found it necessary to raise its sides
-to fit them for breasting the high seas that roll in the open Atlantic
-or are tossed by the contending tides of the English Channel, and
-developed out of it a style of swift and handy vessel called a frigate.</p>
-
-<p>During all these “middle” ages the northern nations had been sailing
-and fighting on the sea as well as the southerners. Stories of sturdy
-battles have come down in tradition and in such chronicles as those of
-Froissart; but those old conflicts seem to have produced little change
-in ship-building or armament until the experience and wisdom brought
-back by the Crusaders began to spread abroad even in the half-savage
-North, and to produce that revival of learning which by and by was to
-make such striking changes in western Europe; and here the leaders are
-Englishmen.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_113">
-<img src="images/i_113.jpg" width="200" height="190" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">FORECASTLE OF THE “GREAT HARRY”<br />
-(“GR&Acirc;CE DE DIEU”).</p></div>
-
-<p>In those days no national navies, properly speaking, existed in
-England, France, or northward. When a monarch wished to transport
-troops by water to some other land, or make a naval expedition or
-campaign, he fitted out the ships that belonged to the crown as the
-king’s personal property, and compelled his subjects to furnish the
-rest, just as his feudal provinces and cities and lords were expected
-to equip and bring to his standard any land forces required. It was to
-systematize this method somewhat in England that William the Conqueror
-“established the Cinque Ports, and gave them certain privileges on
-condition of their furnishing 52 ships, with 24 men in each, for 15
-days, in cases of emergency.” Now and then, at first, Englishmen were
-disposed to resist the “arrest” of ships, which might easily mean the
-ruin of their business; and special laws had to be made to quell this
-reluctance. Another quaint and significant feature of that practice
-was this: In every fleet one or more ships were set apart as “royal,”
-and either the king or his representatives occupied them with court
-ceremony to carry out the fiction of royal dominion over the sea as
-well as upon the land. It naturally followed in England that after her
-navy had shown its power, and signalized it especially by a brilliant
-victory over Spain in 1380, Edward III should have assumed as an
-additional title “King of the Seas”—an act which had far-reaching
-consequences.</p>
-
-<p>During the fifteenth century something like an established navy was
-foreshadowed; but it was not until the reign of Henry VII, when, at
-the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span> end of the fifteenth century, the whole world was exploring the
-oceans and awakening to the importance of sea power, that the first
-vessel, properly called a national war-ship, was built, equipped,
-manned, and sustained at government expense by England. This was the
-<i>Great Harry</i>—a floating fortress rather than a ship; for, with her
-towering, overweighted “castles” fore and aft, she was unseaworthy, and
-came near being sunk by a slight rolling which poured the water into
-her lower ports.</p>
-
-<p>But a better known “<i>Great Harry</i>” was the <i>Henri Gr&acirc;ce de Dieu</i>, built
-by Henry VIII. This king was the real founder of the British navy,
-providing for it many good ships, dock-yards, trained officers, and
-regularly enlisted crews. The advantage of this organization and the
-superiority of English seamanship were demonstrated in the next reign
-by the defeat of the Spanish Armada.</p>
-
-<p>England was then at war with Spain, and Philip II thought to end the
-matter by means of the greatest expedition ever heard of. It began to
-be prepared in 1587 under the title of the Most Fortunate Armada,<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">6</a>
-but an English squadron under Drake attacked the rendezvous at Cadiz,
-destroyed over one hundred vessels and huge quantities of stores, and
-then so ravaged the neighboring coasts as to delay Spain’s project for
-a whole season.</p>
-
-<p>In midsummer of 1588, however, after an unlucky start, in which it
-was driven back by storms, the dreaded Armada appeared in the English
-Channel, like a close flock of huge birds drifting along the British
-coast. It consisted of about 130 ships, seven of which exceeded 1000
-tons burden, and numerous small craft, and was armed with nearly 3000
-cannon. Its commander was the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who was a most
-incompetent man for the post, and it bore, besides nearly 10,000
-sailors and galley-slaves, over 10,000 soldiers; but this naval force
-was not intended to attack England until after it had ferried over from
-Belgium the Spanish army of the Duke of Parma.</p>
-
-<p>To such a force as this England opposed a miserably small fleet—only
-34 vessels that could be called ships; but she hastily armed as many
-more smaller ones as she could, amid great fright and excitement, until
-finally Admiral Howard commanded 80 or 90 ships and boats. There was no
-deficiency in his men, however,—the pick of English “sea-dogs” was at
-his call; and among the leaders of the pack were men we have already
-met elsewhere—Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Martin Frobisher, and others.</p>
-
-<p>What a sight it must have been on that August day as these ships,
-flying the huge banners of Castile, standing high out of the water,
-with lofty “castles” forward and aft, gaudy with carving and color,
-the light rippling here from silken pennants and flashing there
-from shining cannon or huge <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>poop-lanterns, moved past the southern
-headlands of England, watched by half-raging, half-fearful crowds! And
-how mystified and indignant must these watching country people have
-been when Admiral Howard, their only defender, calmly let the Armada
-sail by Plymouth, where the English fleet lay hid in the Solent, and
-Captain Drake coolly insisted upon finishing a game of bowls before he
-would go down to his waiting frigate.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_115">
-<img src="images/i_115.jpg" width="600" height="506" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">STYLE OF SHIPS IN THE TIME OF THE ARMADA.</p></div>
-
-<p>But these captains knew what they were about. In those days, as now,
-in fighting with sailing-vessels the advantage is usually with the
-one who attacks from the windward side; for then he can manœuver his
-vessel, whereas his enemy, heading toward the wind, can do so only with
-difficulty if at all, and hence cannot easily take a good position or
-escape from a bad one. Howard, therefore, waited until the closely
-crowded squadrons of Spain had passed beyond him up the Channel, when
-he issued from Plymouth harbor, bore down upon their rear from the
-windward, and proceeded, as one of the reports expressed it, to “pluck
-their feathers.”</p>
-
-<p>Then began some wonderful days of sea history and naval schooling.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span> The
-Spanish vessels were floating castles armed with heavy guns and crowded
-with soldiers armed with muskets and “harquebuses of crock,”—that is,
-great blunderbusses supported upon a portable rest. They kept in a
-close crowd, like a phalanx of old Swiss infantry, and supposed that
-the English would move against them in another dense raft, and that
-they would fight from deck to deck of grappled ships as if they were on
-land.</p>
-
-<p>But the English knew better. They had few ships as large—the <i>Triumph</i>,
-1100 tons, was the biggest—or guns as heavy as the Spaniards’.
-Instead of attacking in a solid mass, therefore, they spread out,
-hovered on the flanks, darted a ship here and there, fired as they
-saw opportunity, and kept their own vessels out of danger as much as
-possible. In the light and variable winds that prevailed, the great
-galleons of the Armada were almost immovable, while the English for
-the most part had smaller, lighter vessels, whose nimbleness and ready
-obedience to the helm astonished the Spanish. Standing low in the
-water, these would drive their shot right through the enemy’s hulls,
-and make off before the Spaniard could depress his guns enough to do
-any damage in return; while the army of musketeers upon whom he had
-relied so strongly had little chance to do anything at all.</p>
-
-<p>Thus for a week the English frigates and armed fishing-boats harassed
-the Armada on its way up the Channel, capturing and sinking many of
-the ships, while losing some of its own, of course, until at last
-the worried and baffled squadron managed to gain the roadstead of
-Calais, where the army of the Duke of Parma lay. To carry this army
-across and begin a campaign against London seemed now not only out
-of the question, but the safety of the fleet itself was a question;
-for a few days later, when a favorable wind arose, several fire-ships
-came sailing down upon them from the blockading Englishmen outside.
-These fire-ships—an important part of every fleet for two or three
-centuries—were old vessels intended to set fire to an enemy’s ships.
-Their yard-arms were set with great iron hooks, their hulls and
-riggings were saturated with oil, their decks loaded with tar-barrels,
-and their old guns overloaded, so as to spread destruction in every
-direction by bursting. Then bold crews sailed these grappling monsters
-as near the enemy as they dared,—and it must have been a service dear
-to the heart of the daring,—set fire to them, lashed their helms, and
-got away in their boats as best they could.</p>
-
-<p>To escape these dreadful things the Spaniards were obliged to up-anchor
-and put to sea, losing many ships and lives by fire or the wildly
-flying cannon-balls, or by going ashore in the effort; and then the
-Englishmen followed them again, like wolves after a herd of buffalo
-in winter. The Spaniards dared not go back down the Channel, and
-nothing remained to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span> them but the hazardous voyage around the north
-of Scotland—a venture for which the towering, unwieldy galleons were
-ill-fitted. Storms overtook them in the North Sea and on the Atlantic,
-and so many were cast away on the Irish coast, where those who reached
-the shore were slain, that hardly half of the proud Armada crept back
-to Lisbon and Cadiz.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_117">
-<img src="images/i_117.jpg" width="455" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A SEA-FIGHT OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.</p></div>
-
-<p>This incident was one of the most notable in European history for
-two reasons: First, historically, it no doubt saved England and her
-colonies from the Inquisition, and all the other depressing and
-horrible burdens that long afterward weighted the papal countries
-of southern Europe and their American possessions; and, second, it
-reformed naval warfare not only by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span> confirming the value of a regularly
-organized national navy, but by showing that the old-fashioned, dense
-fleet formation, carrying soldiers to fight as they would do on land,
-was wrong and ineffective.</p>
-
-<p>But though Spain had been humbled she was by no means crushed, and
-sea-fighting went on a long time before either she, the French, or the
-Dutch—and the last were the hardest foes—would fully admit England’s
-claim to be sovereign of all the seas around Britain, and strike their
-flags whenever they met one of her “king’s ships” in acknowledgment
-of it. England asserted that the domain of her crown covered not only
-the lands of England (and much of France), but also “the narrow seas”;
-and she defined this domain to include all the Channel waters north
-of Cape Finisterre and thence in a square area westward to the middle
-of the Atlantic. This was not an assertion: “I can beat the world in
-sea-fighting,” but was a legal claim to rule—a declaration that her
-laws extended over that much sea in the same manner that it is now
-agreed that the laws of all nations extend to a distance of three miles
-from their coasts.</p>
-
-<p>The whole idea of naval warfare in those days was defense of your
-own commerce and attack upon your enemy’s; and at that time any one
-you met under another flag was likely to be your “enemy” if either
-party promised spoils worth a fight. Hence not only did privateering
-flourish,—often degenerating into piracy,—not only did all merchant
-vessels go heavily armed, but the royal ships were intended principally
-for convoying or guarding merchantmen. This theory, which was only a
-part of the generally unsettled condition of that formative period,
-kept up a continual state of fighting on the sea, even between peoples
-nominally at peace, and of course led again and again to open wars.
-These were almost always popular, especially among the bold sailors
-but poor traders of England, on account of the chances for prizes and
-plunder that often more than repaid the expenses and losses of the
-conflict; thus the war with the Dutch in 1652-54, in which William Penn
-was a captain, brought in more than <i>&pound;</i>6,000,000 worth of captures—more
-than the financial cost of the war.</p>
-
-<p>At this time—the first half of the sixteenth century—Holland was the
-leading commercial nation of the world. Not only had her merchants
-large interests of their own in both the East and West Indies, very
-extensive fisheries in northern waters, and trading stations in the
-African and American coasts, but a large part of the commerce of
-other nations was conducted in Dutch ships, including much of England
-itself. It was the unrighteous but determined effort to break this up
-by any and every means that brought on the second war with Holland,
-one incident of which was the capture of New Amsterdam (New York); for
-fleets no longer stayed close at home, acting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span> mainly as defenders
-of coasts, as in the previous century, but now cruised and fought on
-the high seas, as the Spanish had learned in many a hard struggle to
-protect their trading and treasure-ships homeward bound.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_119">
-<img src="images/i_119.jpg" width="600" height="375" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">ATTACKING SPANISH GALLEONS OFF THE AZORES.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_120">
-<img src="images/i_120.jpg" width="600" height="396" alt="" />
-<p><span class="smallest sans">DRAWN BY WARREN SHEPPARD.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">SPANISH AND FRENCH SHIPS OF THE LINE TAKING POSITION FOR THE BATTLE OF
-TRAFALGAR.</p></div>
-
-<p>This new practice, however, had required a change in ships and their
-equipment. The English learned this quicker than any one else. They cut
-down the lofty cabins, increased the height, while reducing the weight,
-of masts by inventing jointed topmasts, and replaced the unwieldy
-lateens by an arrangement of lofty, quickly handled square sails. By
-the middle of the seventeenth century ocean-going ships had much the
-same appearance as at present,—although far more elaborately ornamented
-and bulging aft with stern-galleries,—the massive, high-pooped Spanish
-galleon surviving longest as a relic of the old type. These changes
-allowed the armament to be taken from the front and rear of the ship,
-where it had formerly been mainly placed, there being no room in the
-waist, and allowed it to be distributed equally up and down the ship,
-which now began to deliver the “broadsides” that formed such a feature
-in sea-gunnery before the days of turreted ironclads, and this, with
-the constant improvement in the range and power of the artillery, soon
-brought about ideas of battle formation. The early plan was to provide
-a large number of ships,—eighty or one hundred on each side in a single
-action were not uncommon,—because each was weak, and also because a
-great number of fighting-men was thought necessary, and then to advance
-from the windward in a compact mass, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span> endeavor to close with the
-enemy and capture or destroy him by hand-to-hand promiscuous fighting.
-Our word <i>squadron</i> means a square, and, as applied to ships, is a
-survival from those antiquated methods.</p>
-
-<p>But when the practice of using fire-ships became common and effective,
-and trimmer, more active ships superseded the cumbrous galleasses, it
-was seen that this close formation only exposed a fleet to destruction,
-and an open order had to be adopted, with a consequent change of
-tactics. Another lesson was, that a sea-fight was a sailor’s battle,
-where soldiers were out of place, and that to take a great number
-of weak ships into action, crowded with men, was only to risk life
-unnecessarily. Hence, larger and more heavily armed ships, but fewer of
-them, appear in later engagements; and in place of a bunch of vessels,
-“huddled together like a flock of sheep,” at which to shoot, the open
-order gave the gunners small and single targets.</p>
-
-<p>All these changes combined to enforce the wisdom of meeting an enemy
-in a widely spaced line, where the strongest fighting-ships were put
-forward, and smaller vessels came up in the rear. Those ahead met the
-battle-ships at the head of the enemy’s column, and the lesser ones, as
-they came up, were paired off against those of their own size, so that
-the battle became a series of equalized duels. Such was the theory of
-naval tactics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and so arose
-the term line-of-battle ship, descriptive of such national craft as are
-shown on the opposite page.</p>
-
-<p>These fine old line-of-battle ships were large and powerful before
-the seventeenth century ended. Thus in the British navy when 1700
-came in there were eight which had from ninety-six to one hundred and
-ten guns each—fifty-three others carrying more than seventy guns, and
-twenty-three more with more than fifty guns—all at that time regarded
-as fit for the line of battle, though a hundred years later nothing
-less than a “seventy-four” was so considered. Such were the grandly
-picturesque old vessels that won the day at Gibraltar, Copenhagen, and
-Trafalgar, and at many another spot where the whole horizon echoed to
-their thunderous broadsides; but of them all there now remain only a
-few honored hulks in harbors, or a few grand figureheads preserved in
-docks and museums.</p>
-
-<p>Each navy, however, had a greater number of smaller, more active
-vessels, known as frigates, corvettes, sloops-of-war, gun-brigs, etc.,
-which carried from twenty to forty-four guns, and were the “eyes of the
-fleet,” as one old strategist styled them. They answered to what we
-should now call cruisers, and often went on duty in distant parts of
-the world, or in war were scouting about and supporting the main fleet.
-This class was especially cultivated by the United States, as soon as
-it began to make a regular navy, at the close of the Revolutionary
-War, and six frigates were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span> built at our six navy-yards during the
-last years of the last century, which were intended and proved to
-be separately “superior to any single European frigate of the usual
-dimensions” in speed, manœuvering, and fighting power, in proportion to
-their weight of ordnance. Three of them (<i>Constellation</i>, <i>Congress</i>,
-and <i>Chesapeake</i>) mounted thirty-six guns, and three (<i>United
-States</i>, <i>President</i>, and <i>Constitution</i>) forty-four guns each—mainly
-24-pounders; and all gave so good an account of themselves, as ships,
-that the high compliment was paid us of their being carefully imitated
-by foreign naval constructors.</p>
-
-<p>This is not a naval history, so that I am not concerned to tell of all
-the glorious or inglorious work of the navies of Europe in obtaining
-and holding, or failing to get and keep, trade routes open and
-territorial possessions intact in various parts of the world. During
-the seventeenth and eighteenth and far into the nineteenth century,
-there was no time when some nations were not fighting on the sea if not
-on land; and much of the time <i>all</i> the maritime nations were hard at
-it, turning their guns to-day on the allies of yesterday, and fighting
-shoulder to shoulder with them the next season against some friend of
-the year before.</p>
-
-<p>A few of the most famous battles ought to be spoken of, however, as
-illustrating the methods and development of naval warfare, and because
-we now recognize that their consequences were far-reaching.</p>
-
-<p>In the wars which broke out toward the close of the eighteenth century
-due to Napoleon’s ambition to rule the world, Great Britain found
-herself engaged in a struggle not only with France, but really with
-the whole world, for the command of the seas that washed the western
-coast of Europe. The only sign of friendship to England from the Baltic
-to Gibraltar was in the doubtful neutrality of Portugal. England had
-to abandon the Mediterranean, and devote herself to facing the allied
-powers against her outside the Gates of Hercules as best she could.
-In 1797 she made a beginning by crushing a fleet of Dutch ships off
-Camperdown (Holland), and a Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent; but,
-though both were great battles, neither had any lasting effect; and
-in spite of them Napoleon planned his celebrated invasion of England
-for the following year, supposing that by his expedition to Egypt,
-threatening England’s East Indian possessions, he would draw away so
-much of the British navy that he and his allies could put an army
-across the English Channel unhindered. I need not say that his invasion
-of England never was even attempted; but for a time his fleet did hold
-command of the Mediterranean—a state of things to which an end was put
-by England’s most famous naval hero, Horatio Nelson.</p>
-
-<p>A long series of brilliant exploits had given Nelson fame, and the
-vigorous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span> accounts of them he used to send home helped his great
-popularity. A large part of his service had been in American waters.</p>
-
-<p>In 1798 Nelson was a rear-admiral, and was sent to the Mediterranean
-after the French fleet, which, having convoyed Napoleon’s army to
-its landing at Alexandria, was ready for new operations. It is
-characteristic of the slow and almost useless methods of gaining
-intelligence in those days, that from early June to the end of July
-Nelson searched for this flotilla, and was unable to get more news of
-it than an occasional rumor that it had been at some place or other
-days or weeks before. The French knew no more as to the movements of
-their pursuers, yet the fleets were twice within a few miles of each
-other. This was Nelson’s first independent command, and his patience
-and nerves were nearly worn out by anxiety.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_123">
-<img src="images/i_123.jpg" width="600" height="468" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">WHEN DECATUR WAS A MIDSHIPMAN.</p></div>
-
-<p>At last, on the first day of August, the English almost stumbled on the
-French at anchor in the Bay of Aboukir, among the mouths of the Nile,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
-between Alexandria and Rosetta—a shallow roadstead full of shoals and
-rocks, for which Nelson had neither chart nor pilot.</p>
-
-<p>In the interior of this bay lay the Napoleonic squadron, under Admiral
-Brueys, in such fancied security that a large part of the crews was
-ashore, and some of the ships unprepared for a battle when the British
-appeared. It was anchored in line of battle, however, and consisted
-of thirteen ships of the line, the central one being the flagship
-<i>Orient</i>, having 120 guns, and probably the largest and most complete
-war-ship then afloat. On each side of her were the <i>Franklin</i> and
-the <i>Tonnant</i>, of 80 guns each, and none of the others were greatly
-inferior.</p>
-
-<p>The British had also thirteen ships, but none was the equal of the
-best French, and one of them did not engage in the attack at all.
-Knowing nothing of the harbor, and aware that all his ships drew
-much water,—perhaps thirty feet,—Nelson had to make a long and very
-cautious detour, throwing the lead every moment and feeling his way
-in. It was then late in the afternoon, and half-past six before the
-<i>Goliath</i>, leading the column, got near enough to attract the French
-fire. Replying, but not halting, the <i>Goliath</i>, followed closely by the
-<i>Zealous</i> and <i>Orion</i>, made for the head of the line, and then with
-a daring unrivaled, for there was barely enough water to float their
-keels, these ships slowly turned around the foremost French vessel and
-dropped their anchors in the rear of the enemy’s line. The other ships,
-as they came up, ranged alongside the front of the French, and the
-deepening twilight resounded with such a roar of broadsides as never
-will be heard again.</p>
-
-<p>In the darkness and smoke an English seventy-four, the <i>Bellerophon</i>,
-had engaged the monstrous <i>Orient</i>, and in a short time had been
-crushed; all her masts were swept out of her, two hundred of her people
-were killed and wounded, and she drifted out of action. But nearly the
-same fate had by that time overtaken the French <i>Guerri&egrave;re</i>, for the
-<i>Theseus</i> had coolly placed herself where she could rake the anchored
-ship and tear her to pieces. The moment the <i>Bellerophon</i> drifted
-off, however, her place was taken by two newly arrived frigates, and
-the <i>Orient</i> presently found herself the target of three ships which
-slowly but surely were cutting her to pieces in spite of her tremendous
-resistance. Her admiral had been killed on her deck, where half her
-officers and men lay dead or wounded, when it was suddenly seen that
-she was on fire, and the whole battle was instinctively suspended to
-watch the magnificent spectacle, save where some still poured in shot
-and shell to prevent the French crew from extinguishing the flames.</p>
-
-<p>Powerless either to save their ship or launch their boats, the remnant
-of the <i>Orient’s</i> crew could only fling themselves into the water and
-trust<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span> to the mingled boats of friends and foes to pick them up. The
-ships nearest slipped their cables, and tried to edge away out of
-danger as the flames enveloped the towering masts, burning with amazing
-fierceness in the tarred rigging and lighting up the desert for miles
-inland, while the hull became a furnace. Suddenly, at a quarter before
-ten, a volcano-like explosion tore the glowing old battle-ship asunder,
-a torrent of burning fragments was hurled aloft,—with how many dead
-heroes, no one knows,—and double darkness closed over the appalling
-scene. Then the black waves were lighted anew by the flash of cannon
-and musketry, and the battle went on until daylight before the last of
-the French vessels had been conquered, while two of them had managed
-to steal away. Of the other eleven one had been burned and sunk, three
-had gone ashore, where one burned, and the remainder had been crushed
-into surrendering. The English did not lose a single vessel, for even
-the dismantled <i>Bellerophon</i> could float, and their loss in men was far
-less than that of the French.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_125">
-<img src="images/i_125.jpg" width="600" height="371" alt="" />
-<p><span class="smallest sans">DRAWN BY WARREN SHEPPARD.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">THE “THESEUS” ATTACKING THE “GUERRI&Egrave;RE.”</p></div>
-
-<p>Historians tell us that this victory was the grandest naval success
-on record. Nelson himself said that victory was too weak a term—it
-was a catastrophe. It put an end at once to Napoleon’s campaign in
-Egypt, and to all his designs against India. It gave the command of the
-Mediterranean to England, emboldened Turkey and Russia to recover the
-Ionian Islands,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span> gave Naples a chance to assert herself, and aroused
-Austria and Russia to resist by armies Napoleon’s aggressions, so
-that from this battle dates his downfall. Its influence soon reached
-the United States, and caused it to break through its neutrality
-and begin upon the sea that naval war with France of which we hear
-very little nowadays, but which gave to our own naval record such
-glorious incidents as Truxton’s battles in the <i>Constellation</i> with
-<i>L’Insurgente</i> and <i>La Vengeance</i>, and Captain Little’s capture, in the
-corvette <i>Boston</i>, of the French sloop-of-war <i>Le Berceau</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Nelson remained in the Mediterranean for some years, by no means idle,
-and then did service of extraordinary value elsewhere, as at the battle
-of Copenhagen, which in a single remarkable conflict put an end to
-a northern conspiracy against England, and saved her a vast deal of
-trouble; but his final service was the most momentous of all, at any
-rate for the fortunes of Great Britain alone, and this was the winning
-of the battle of Trafalgar.</p>
-
-<p>In 1805 Napoleon had prepared for another grand invasion of England,
-and with great skill had gathered a fleet of allied French and Spanish
-vessels, which was to protect and co&ouml;perate with the strong army he
-proposed to land along the Kentish shores. This fleet was commanded by
-Admiral Villeneuve, and assembled at Cadiz, where, in October, 1805,
-it was being watched by an English fleet, commanded by Nelson and
-Collingwood, consisting of thirty-three ships of the line; twenty-seven
-of these were present when, on the morning of the 21st, the allies,
-twenty-nine battle-ships strong, came sailing out, hoping to avoid
-battle if possible. This, Nelson was resolved, should not happen; and
-dividing his forces into two columns, he made at them in such a way as
-to strike their line (then off Cape Trafalgar) in the middle of its
-crescent. The wind was very light, and an hour or more elapsed before
-even the heads of the line struck the enemy, so that there was plenty
-of time to make every preparation, and there was constant instruction
-by signaling from Nelson’s flagship <i>Victory</i>. Then at the last moment,
-when the first gun was ready to be fired, there rose upon the signal
-halyards of the <i>Victory</i> the message that, received with ringing
-cheers, has been an inspiration to patriots the world around ever since
-since—</p>
-
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">England expects every man will do his duty.</span></p>
-
-<p>A few moments later Collingwood in the <i>Royal Sovereign</i>, and Nelson
-in the <i>Victory</i>, were in the thick of the foreign fleet, which
-awaited them in disorderly array, but closed about these two, bent
-upon destroying them if possible before any others could come up. The
-fury of the duels that ensued, where ships were mixed in disorder, and
-sometimes three or four against one, passes adequate description. None,
-perhaps, fared worse than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span> the <i>Belle Isle</i>, a large English two-decker
-that was the first to reach the scene after the <i>Royal Sovereign</i>, and
-to draw off some of the fire that threatened to pulverize Collingwood’s
-ship.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_127">
-<img src="images/i_127.jpg" width="600" height="206" alt="England expects every man will do his D U T Y" />
-<p><span class="smallest sans">DRAWN FROM THE MODEL IN THE GREENWICH MUSEUM.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">NELSON’S SIGNAL.</p></div>
-
-<p>The wreckage and suffering on other ships were almost as great. The
-very first broadside of the <i>Royal Sovereign</i>, taking the <i>Santa Ana</i>,
-struck down 400 out of the 1000 persons aboard; and the <i>Sovereign</i>
-herself soon lost every mast. The <i>Santissima Trinidada</i>, a Spanish
-four-decker, and the largest ship then afloat, was reduced to a wreck,
-and a dozen others lost a part or all of their masts. As for the
-<i>Victory</i>, she was always in the thick of it, receiving at one time the
-concentrated fire of seven hostile battle-ships, yet was not too much
-disabled to be manœuvered. Her captain’s aim was to engage directly
-with the French flagship <i>Bucentaure</i>, but she was closely attended
-by three other large ships, and difficult to reach. Nevertheless, the
-<i>Victory</i> finally got across her stern, and from a few yards distance
-poured in a broadside which, sweeping the whole length of her interior,
-dismounted twenty guns, and killed and wounded 400 men. As she passed
-on, returning the fire of the other vessels near by, she was closely
-followed by the <i>Temeraire</i>, the second English ship, which had already
-become almost unmanageable; and a lifting of the smoke showed her
-smashing a little French frigate, the <i>Redoubtable</i>, which, by and by,
-was captured after almost every man had been killed, and she was in a
-sinking condition. The astonishing resistance of this little vessel,
-and the damage she did by soldiers with muskets crowded in her tops
-and firing down upon the decks of the English ships, form one of the
-most noteworthy incidents of naval history; and it is not too much to
-say that she inflicted upon Great Britain as great harm as all the
-rest of the allies put together, for it was a musket-ball from the
-mizzentop of the <i>Redoubtable</i> that struck down, early in the action,
-the great Nelson himself. He seemed to have had a feeling, even before
-leaving England, that he would not survive this campaign, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span> knew his
-wound was mortal the instant it was received. He was carried below,
-and remained alive and conscious about three hours, eagerly listening
-to reports of the progress of the fight, and rejoicing at last in a
-knowledge of victory. His last words, murmured again and again, with
-his failing breath, seemed an answer to his signaled injunction, for
-they were: “<i>Thank God I have done my duty.</i>”</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Other men [writes Captain Mahan] have died in the hour of victory,
-but to no other has victory so singular and so signal stamped the
-fulfilment and completion of a great life’s work. “Finis coronat
-opus” has of no man been more true than of Nelson. Results momentous
-and stupendous were to flow from the annihilation of all sea power
-except that of Great Britain, which was Nelson’s great achievement;
-but his part was done when Trafalgar was fought, and his death in the
-moment of completed success has obtained for that superb victory an
-immortality of fame which even its own grandeur could scarcely have
-insured.</p></div>
-
-<p>No such fleet actions as this ever occurred in North American waters
-in the time of the “old navy,” though there was plenty of cruising
-and fighting up and down the coast and in the West Indies. The United
-States had made its new flag respected before the end of the eighteenth
-century, but it was done mainly in European waters, where that
-marvelous captain, Paul Jones, had been defying enemies to the point of
-rashness.</p>
-
-<p>Paul Jones was the first man to hoist our national ensign (the
-rattlesnake flag) on an American ship, and again the first to hoist
-the stars and stripes, and was the ranking officer of the continental
-navy. He records that “in the Revolution he had twenty-three battles
-and solemn rencounters by sea; made seven descents in Britain and her
-colonies; took of her navy two ships of equal and two of far superior
-force,” and so on. It is true that he alone of his day steadfastly
-refused to acknowledge England’s supremacy of the seas; that the flag
-of the United States alone was never struck to Great Britain except
-under force of honorable combat; and that on the ships commanded by
-Paul Jones it was never struck at all!</p>
-
-<p>Every Yankee school-boy knows of the terrible fight of the crazy old
-sloop-of-war <i>Bon Homme Richard</i> against the <i>Serapis</i>, a new English
-50-gun frigate in the North Sea, in which a sinking and burning and
-shot-riddled vessel, able after the first broadside to bring only
-three or four small guns into practice, conquered and captured her
-twice-greater antagonist. It is not a story one can tell in a few
-words, but it was a deed that is regarded in naval annals as among the
-most extraordinary in the history of the world, and it won for the new
-republic a credit in Europe that was of vast benefit to it and all its
-wandering citizens.</p>
-
-<p>Great Britain, though humiliated, had not been seriously hurt by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
-loss of two or three ships out of her six hundred, and she still tried
-to enforce against the rising naval power on the west side of the
-Atlantic the subservience which she received along its eastern shores.
-It took the form of asserting her right to stop and board any American
-vessel, governmental or private, and seize and impress into her own
-service any British subject found serving in the crew. This always met
-with protest and resistance, and at last became so galling that in 1812
-the United States declared war against Great Britain’s might rather
-than continue to submit to it.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_129">
-<img src="images/i_129.jpg" width="300" height="330" alt="" />
-<p class="noindent"><span class="smaller"><i>Drawn from Life by S. DeKoster Decʳ.8 1800,<br />
-Engraved by Jd. Stow.</i></span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">BARON NELSON OF THE NILE.</p></div>
-
-<p>This might gradually overcame us, and British fleets sailed up and down
-our coasts unhindered, but not until the enemy had been surprised by
-many harder knocks than they anticipated, and had learned one thing for
-certain,—that while man for man the Yankees were equally good seamen
-and fighters, they were better ship-builders, and could teach lessons
-in that art which their enemies were not above learning: and finally we
-won by sheer force of victories at sea.</p>
-
-<p>I have already spoken of the six frigates which were used in that war,
-as admittedly the best of their kind in the world. Except the unlucky
-<i>Chesapeake</i>, which was rashly carried unprepared into the fatal action
-against the <i>Shannon</i>, where Lawrence lost his life, but won undying
-fame in the memory of his countrymen by his “Don’t give up the ship,”
-all did glorious work. Thus, the <i>United States</i> under Decatur reduced
-to a wreck off Madeira, and brought as a prize to New York, the British
-44-gun frigate <i>Macedonian</i> in October, 1812, itself remaining almost
-uninjured,—a victory due to superior seamanship and gunnery.</p>
-
-<p>The same skill, using a ship of superior sailing power, accounted
-largely for the splendid victory of the United States sloop-of-war
-<i>Wasp</i> (18 guns), a week earlier, near Bermuda, in an encounter with
-the British sloop <i>Frolic</i> (19 guns), where in three quarters of an
-hour the <i>Frolic</i> was totally dismasted and reduced to a rolling
-wreck, with ninety killed or wounded out of a crew of one hundred and
-ten, while the <i>Wasp’s</i> loss was only ten. A British seventy-four
-then came up and captured both the victor and her prize; but eighteen
-months later a second <i>Wasp</i>, by reason of her better gunnery, cut to
-pieces at different times two other ships with comparatively<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span> small
-injury to herself. Nor could the <i>President</i> have given so good an
-account of herself in her unfortunate encounter with the <i>Belvidera</i>,
-and again when chased and finally captured by the squadron led by the
-<i>Endymion</i>, had not her sailing qualities and gunnery been of so high
-an order—qualities which also distinguished the American fleets on Lake
-Erie and Lake Champlain.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_130">
-<img src="images/i_130.jpg" width="600" height="385" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE “FROLIC” REDUCED TO A WRECK BY THE FIRST “WASP”
-(1812).</p></div>
-
-<p>But the honors of that brilliant naval war belonged chiefly, after all,
-to the <i>Constitution</i>—“Old Ironsides,” as the people loved to call
-her,—which is enshrined in the history and hearts of the United States
-as Nelson’s <i>Victory</i> is in those of Great Britain.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Constitution</i> was the finest, perhaps, of the United States
-frigates, and a favorite ship with commanders, yet her fame began with
-her success in running away, Broke’s British squadron chasing her three
-nights and two days, only to lose her after all. The winds were so
-light that she sent out her boats to help the sails urge her forward.
-It was only a few days after that (August 19, 1812) that Commodore
-Isaac Hull, cruising in search of the British vessel <i>Guerri&egrave;re</i> (the
-same that had been captured from the French in the battle of the Nile,
-and again dismasted at Trafalgar), overhauled her off the coast of
-Newfoundland. The London newspapers had not only been sneering at the
-<i>Constitution</i> as “a bundle of pine boards sailing under a bit of
-striped bunting,” but Captain Dacres had sent a boastful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span> challenge
-to Hull to meet him and see what would happen. The vessels, though
-nominally of different rate, were actually in close equality, and
-both crews were eager for a fair fight. It was already well along in
-the afternoon, and the sea was rough, but Hull would not reply to the
-enemy’s fire until he was within pistol-shot, then his broadside opened.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>“Fifteen minutes after the contest began,” to quote Lossing’s lively
-account, “the mizzenmast of the <i>Guerri&egrave;re</i> was shot away, her
-mainyard was in slings, and her hull, spars, sails, and rigging were
-torn to pieces. By a skilful movement, the <i>Constitution</i> now fell
-foul of her foe, her bowsprit running into the larboard quarter of
-her antagonist. The cabin of the <i>Constitution</i> was set on fire by
-the explosion of the forward guns of the <i>Guerri&egrave;re</i>, but the flames
-were soon extinguished. Both parties attempted to board, while the
-roar of the great guns was terrific. The sea was rolling heavily,
-and would not permit a safe passage from one vessel to the other.
-At length the <i>Constitution</i> became disentangled, and shot ahead of
-the <i>Guerri&egrave;re</i>, when the mainmast of the latter, shattered into
-weakness, fell into the sea. The <i>Guerri&egrave;re</i>, shivered and shorn,
-rolled like a log in the trough of the billows. Hull sent his
-compliments to Captain Dacres, and inquired whether he had struck
-his flag. Dacres, who was a ‘jolly tar,’ looking up and down at the
-stumps of his masts, coolly and dryly replied: ‘Well, I don’t know.
-Our mizzenmast is gone, our mainmast is gone,—upon the whole you may
-say we <i>have</i> struck our flag.’”</p></div>
-
-<p>Too completely wrecked to be of any further use, the historic old ship
-was set on fire and blown up, and so ended her pride and her story.
-Hull lost only fourteen men killed and wounded, while the British lost
-seventy, dead, and all the survivors prisoners. This calamity, on the
-heels of similar successes elsewhere for the “bit of striped bunting,”
-spread consternation throughout Great Britain not only, but in the
-other European monarchies, for it presaged the rise of a new power to
-be reckoned with, where novel and superior instruments and methods of
-warfare opposed uncalculated forces to the old r&eacute;gime.</p>
-
-<p>This conviction was enforced upon Europe anew only four months later
-by the <i>Constitution</i> overtaking and crushing in West Indian waters
-the 38-gun frigate <i>Java</i>, which also was burned to the water’s edge,
-because the wreck was not worth saving; and again the British loss was
-many times greater than the American. Captain William Bainbridge, who
-had distinguished himself in the Mediterranean, was her commander. </p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_132">
-<img src="images/i_132.jpg" width="382" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE “CONSTITUTION” CHASED BY CAPTAIN BROKE’S SQUADRON<br />
-
-<br />The ports on the upper deck aft were roughly cut to meet the emergency.
-The sailors in the rigging threw water from buckets upon the sails to
-make them hold better the faint breeze, and below hose pipe was used to
-the same purpose. During the three days’ chase boats were sent out to
-tow, and kedge-anchors were used to warp the ship forward.</p></div>
-
-<p>Various successes marked her career for the next two years, until,
-under the command of Captain Charles Stewart, she had her memorable
-adventure off Madeira, in which she engaged with the two British ships
-<i>Cyane</i>, thirty-six guns, and <i>Levant</i>, eighteen guns, and captured
-both, with a loss of only three men killed and twelve wounded.
-Stewart set sail with his prizes and prisoners for Porto Praya,
-whence he purposed sending his prisoners to New York in a captured
-merchantman. Reaching there on March 10th, he was next day busy at
-these arrangements, when the topsails of several men-of-war were seen
-entering the harbor through the prevailing fog. Having no trust that,
-if these were British, their commanders would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span> respect the courtesies
-of a weak neutral port, Stewart felt that his only chance was to try to
-run away in the fog, and made immediate preparations to do so, sending
-word to the <i>Levant</i> and <i>Cyane</i> to follow. Being discovered by the
-strangers—three large British frigates—at the outlet of the harbor,
-their escape immediately became a question of seamanship and sailing.
-Here the Americans showed their superiority, and effectually dodging
-both the ships and the cannon-balls of the pursuers, the <i>Levant</i> got
-back under the protection of the guns of the fort at Porto Praya, while
-the <i>Constitution</i> and <i>Levant</i> fairly outsailed the frigates and
-escaped.</p>
-
-<p>In 1830 brave Old Ironsides was condemned as worn out, and ordered
-to be sold. But, as a similar sad fate overtaking the “Fighting
-<i>Temeraire</i>” had been made the occasion of an immortal painting
-by Turner, and so, perhaps, had caused Nelson’s still more famous
-battle-ship <i>Victory</i> to be preserved in the harbor of Portsmouth
-as a shrine of naval inspiration, so the obloquy that menaced the
-<i>Constitution</i> now fired the heart of a young poet to write a
-passionate appeal to patriotism. Who does not know Dr. Holmes’s ringing
-stanzas?—</p>
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="line">Oh, better that her shattered hulk</div>
-<div class="i1">Should sink beneath the wave;</div>
-<div class="line">Her thunders shook the mighty deep,</div>
-<div class="i1">And there should be her grave.</div>
-<div class="line">Nail to the mast her holy flag,</div>
-<div class="i1">Set every threadbare sail,</div>
-<div class="line">And give her to the God of Storms,</div>
-<div class="i1">The lightning and the gale!</div>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_133">
-<img src="images/i_133.jpg" width="300" height="179" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">HOMEWARD BOUND.</p></div>
-
-<p>The country caught the spirit, and such a cry of protest went up that
-the vandalism was stayed, and Old Ironsides was again repaired—hardly
-anything but her ornaments was now left of the original structure—and
-took several cruises, one of which was in carrying wheat to
-famine-stricken Ireland. Later she was used as a school-ship, but
-finally became worthless even for that, and in 1895 the question
-arose whether she should be broken up at the Brooklyn navy-yard or
-towed around to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and there laid up in a
-line with the <i>Macedonian</i> and a few other ancient hulks that were
-rotting quietly away in honorable age, and have now wholly disappeared.
-Sentiment dictated the latter course, and, with a crew aboard, prepared
-to take to their boats at a moment’s notice, the leaking and crazy old
-warrior, stately even yet, and sadly saluted by every fort and vessel
-she passed, crept around to her last berth at Kittery Point. She is the
-last and the most glorious representative of the “old navy.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_134">
-<img src="images/i_134.jpg" width="600" height="356" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">TYPES OF BATTLE-SHIPS—1890 AND 1800.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="center noindent"><span class="larger">CHAPTER VI</span><br />
-(<i>Continued</i>)<br />
-<br /><span class="large">WAR-SHIPS AND NAVAL BATTLES</span></p>
-
-<h3 class="nobreak" id="PART_II_PRESENT_ERA">PART II—THE PRESENT ERA OF STEAM AND STEEL</h3></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_135.jpg" width="75" height="76" alt="ornate capital W" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">The</span> introduction of steam made little difference in naval affairs at
-first, so far as either strategy or tactics are concerned, although it
-changed the conditions of naval action in two principal ways and in
-many minor ones. Ships could now, like the early galleys, be placed
-in any position the commander pleased, and, unlike galleys, this
-effort could be sustained a long time, for engines do not tire out
-like human arms. On the other hand, ships propelled by steam needed to
-return to port at frequent intervals to obtain coal, and naval powers
-found it necessary to provide, either by possession or treaty, safe
-coaling-stations in various parts of the world for the use of their
-cruising fleets.</p>
-
-<p>The first steam war-ships were naturally fitted with side
-paddle-wheels; but as soon as the screw-propeller came into use the
-navy was quick to adopt it. “By its use the whole motive power could
-be protected by being placed below the water-line. It interfered much
-less than the paddle with the efficiency and handiness of the vessel
-under sail alone, and it enabled ships to be kept generally under
-sail. Great importance was attached to this, as the handling of a ship
-under sail was justly thought an invaluable means of training both
-officers and men in ready resource, prompt action, and self-reliance.”
-For this reason masts and sails were retained long after they were
-admitted to be detrimental to the fighting qualities of battle-ships.
-Naval reformers had to wait until the last generation of “old salts,”
-trained on “blue water,” had died off, and their scornful sneers at
-“tea-kettle” seamanship had been silenced in the only way possible,
-before they could persuade governments to build or men to serve in
-the new style<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> of vessels. In truth, the transition from the fighting
-machinery and methods that prevailed until, say, the bombardment of
-Acre, in 1840, to those that decided the inferiority of China in her
-struggles with Japan at the Yalu and elsewhere, was rapid enough to
-make even a sea-dog dizzy.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_136">
-<img src="images/i_136.jpg" width="600" height="280" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE “KEARSARGE” GETTING INTO POSITION TO RAKE THE
-“ALABAMA” AT THE CLOSE OF THE COMBAT.</p></div>
-
-<p>Excellent types of the war-steamers, intermediate between the old two- and
-three-deckers and the sailless “ironclads” that followed, were
-those two actors in that most glorious sea-fight of the American Civil
-War—the <i>Kearsarge</i> and <i>Alabama</i>.</p>
-
-<p>In this great fight, which took place a few miles off the harbor of
-Cherbourg, France, one beautiful summer Sunday (June 19th) in 1864,
-much the same tactics prevailed as in any one of the earlier ocean
-duels. As the <i>Alabama</i> came on she began firing the two-hundred-pound
-pivot-rifle forward, which was her main gun, while the <i>Kearsarge</i> was
-yet a mile away. The latter waited a little before replying, but only a
-few moments elapsed before both were near enough and hard at it, each
-doing its best to get a position ahead of its antagonist for raking,—a
-disadvantage which the other steadily avoided; and this caused them
-to follow one another about in advancing circles, of which seven were
-described before the end came.</p>
-
-<p>We have a story of the battle as seen from the deck of the <i>Kearsarge</i>,
-written by her surgeon, who had little to do except observe the
-conflict.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The <i>Kearsarge</i> gunners [he tells us] had been cautioned against
-firing without direct aim, and had been advised to point the heavy
-guns below rather than above the water-line, and to clear the deck
-of the enemy with the lighter ones. Though subjected to an incessant
-storm of shot and shell, they kept their stations and obeyed
-instructions.</p>
-
-<p>The effect upon the enemy was readily perceived, and nothing could
-restrain the enthusiasm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span> of our men. Cheer succeeded cheer; caps were
-thrown in the air or overboard; jackets were discarded; sanguine of
-victory, the men were shouting as each projectile took effect: “That
-is a good one!” “Down, boys!” “Give her another like the last!” “Now
-we have her!” and so on, cheering and shouting to the end.</p>
-
-<p>After exposure to an uninterrupted cannonade for eighteen minutes
-without casualties, a sixty-eight-pounder Blakely shell passed
-through the starboard bulwarks below the main rigging, exploded
-upon the quarterdeck, and wounded three of the crew of the after
-pivot-gun. With these exceptions, not an officer or man received
-serious injury. The three unfortunates were speedily taken below,
-and so quietly was the act done, that at the termination of the
-fight a large number of the men were unaware that any of their
-comrades were wounded. Two shots entered the ports occupied by the
-thirty-twos, where several men were stationed, one taking effect in
-the hammock-netting, the other going through the opposite port, yet
-none were hit. A shell exploded in the hammock-netting and set the
-ship on fire; the alarm calling for fire-quarters was sounded, and
-men detailed for such an emergency put out the fire, while the rest
-stayed at the guns.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Kearsarge</i> concentrated her fire and poured in the eleven-inch
-shells with deadly effect. One penetrated the coal-bunker of the
-<i>Alabama</i>, and a dense cloud of coal-dust arose. Others struck near
-the water-line between the main and mizzen masts, exploded within
-board, or passing through burst beyond. Crippled and torn, the
-<i>Alabama</i> moved less quickly and began to settle by the stern, yet
-did not slacken her fire, but returned successive broadsides without
-disastrous result to us.</p>
-
-<p>Captain Semmes witnessed the havoc made by the shells, especially by
-those of our after pivot-gun, and offered a reward for its silence.
-Soon his battery was turned upon this particular offending gun
-for the purpose of silencing it. It was in vain, for the work of
-destruction went on. We had completed the seventh rotation on the
-circular track and begun the eighth; the <i>Alabama</i>, now settling,
-sought to escape by setting all available sail (fore-trysail and two
-jibs), left the circle, amid a shower of shot and shell, and headed
-for the French waters; but to no purpose. In winding the <i>Alabama</i>
-presented the port battery with only two guns bearing, and showed
-gaping sides through which the water washed. The <i>Kearsarge</i> pursued,
-keeping on a line nearer the shore, and with a few well-directed
-shots hastened the sinking condition. Then the <i>Alabama</i> was at our
-mercy. Thus ended the fight after one hour and two minutes.</p></div>
-
-<p>One incident of this battle much talked of at the time, and given as
-an excuse for their defeat by the Confederates (though without good
-reason), was the fact that the waist of the <i>Kearsarge</i>, opposite the
-engines, was protected by anchor-chains, hung in close festoons on the
-outside of the ship, and kept in place and concealed by a boxing of
-thin boards. This, however, was not the first attempt at protecting
-ships by armor, which had now become necessary to meet successfully
-the better guns and projectiles that year by year were increased in
-penetrative power. New powders and explosives were constantly being
-invented also, each more effective than the preceding; and as these
-were not only used in guns but applied to the filling of shells, these
-bursting missiles for a time almost displaced solid shot.</p>
-
-<p>Along with this the discovery and perfection of the Bessemer and
-other processes of making steel, and methods of adapting rifling to
-great cannon,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span> produced a rapid and varied increase in size and an
-improvement in quality in the guns supplied to ships as well as in
-those used upon shore.</p>
-
-<p>Against these new weapons the old “wooden walls” were of no avail. Oak
-and teak, however sound and thick, failed to turn aside the conical
-projectiles as they had the old round shot and shell. The ponderous
-missiles would crash clear through, smashing everything in their path,
-and sending showers of death-dealing splinters right and left. The navy
-had to protect itself by a revival of the armor with which knights of
-the middle ages guarded against arrows and javelins and sword-points.
-By and by, when guns and bullets came, the knights thickened their
-armor in an attempt to resist these new missiles, until at last it
-reached a weight too great to be carried, and the whole cumbrous
-panoply had to be laid aside, and knightly tactics altogether changed.
-Many persons believe that this history will be repeated in the case
-of the sea-warriors of the world, which, within the memory of many a
-grizzled admiral, have changed from buoyant and beautiful ships to grim
-and shapeless fortresses afloat.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_138">
-<img src="images/i_138.jpg" width="400" height="381" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE UNITED STATES FRIGATE “MERRIMAC”<br />
-BEFORE AND AFTER CONVERSION INTO
-AN IRONCLAD.<br />
-
-<span class="smallest">Compare with illustration on page 139.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>The Americans, fearless of sea-traditions, were the first to propose
-armor for ships, but the French first practically applied it, building
-several “floating batteries,” covered with iron 4&frac34; inches thick, in
-1855. The English copied them, in somewhat more ship-shape form; and
-then the French began boldly to sheathe some of their frigates with
-iron plates and call them “ironclads.” By this time iron hulls had
-begun to be used commonly in the British merchant service, but of
-course the men-of-war’s men, the slowest class of persons on earth
-to accept any change, insisted that iron would by no means do for
-war-ships. Nevertheless a few progressive spirits persuaded their
-high-mightinesses, the Lords of the Admiralty, to try an experiment
-in building one, and, in 1860, the first iron war-ship was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span> launched
-and named <i>Warrior</i>, while all the old salts wagged their heads and
-predicted the end of “Britannia rules the waves,” until there wasn’t a
-really <i>jolly</i> tar to be found from Penolar Point to Pentland Firth.
-To a certain extent these hardy old growlers were right, though their
-idea of a remedy was wrong. It proved a failure to build old-style
-battle-ships of iron or even of steel, or to coat them all over with
-armor, even when greatly thickened. Not only were they slow and
-somewhat unmanageable, but by the time one of them had been built with
-thicker walls than its latest rival, somebody had invented artillery
-whose projectiles would penetrate it. Ships that are “ship-shape,”
-that is, possess masts and sails, but are constructed wholly of iron
-or steel, and more or less heavily armored, have survived, and will
-always be a part of the world’s navies, no doubt, but their uses will
-be subsidiary to heavy fighting; and with the disappearance of the
-wooden sailing line-of-battle ship in the Crimean war and of the iron
-war-steamer a quarter of a century later, all traditions of the “old
-navy” were ended—traditions that went back to the days of Drake.</p>
-
-<p>But who could have foreseen that this swift and momentous upsetting
-should come about, not through the efforts of the great sea powers of
-Europe,—the giants who had been struggling for the control of the ocean
-for three hundred years,—but from the brain and purse of landsmen in a
-country of the New World not taken into account as a naval power at all.</p>
-
-<p>You need not be told that it was Ericsson’s invention and Henry
-Grinnell’s building and Lieutenant Worden’s courageous fighting of the
-little <i>Monitor</i> in Hampton Roads, on that fair March Sunday in 1862,
-that brought about this change. When her turret—the “cheese-box on a
-raft”—successfully withstood the assault of that heavily armed floating
-battery, the <i>Merrimac</i> (or <i>Virginia</i>), all the war-ships of the world
-felt themselves beaten, too, and wise seamen saw that they must prepare
-to face a new foe.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_139">
-<img src="images/i_139.jpg" width="350" height="213" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SIDE ELEVATION AND DECK-PLAN OF THE “MONITOR.”</p></div>
-
-<p>At once all maritime governments began to build fighting-vessels which
-were castles of steel afloat, and smaller ships for various services
-that more resembled a Nootka war-canoe in outline than one of the
-frigates that used to do their work. So shapeless were they that a
-new term had to be used,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span> and we began to call them <i>cruisers</i>. All
-war-ships, in fact, are now classified by their work, not by their
-shape or size or rig.</p>
-
-<p>First, fewest, and heaviest are the harbor-defense vessels—monitors and
-massively walled floating batteries, intended to remain in harbors, or
-close to the coast, as movable forts.</p>
-
-<p>Second, battle-ships—the strongest, most thickly armored, heavily armed
-style of ships that can be made, and still be able to go to sea; but
-these are not expected to leave their home ports for a long time, nor
-to go to any great distance unless compelled to do so in actual war.</p>
-
-<p>Third, cruisers. These take the place of the old-fashioned lesser
-fighting-ships, the seventy-fours, frigates, corvettes, and sloops, and
-vary greatly in size, model, speed, and power of armament.</p>
-
-<p>Fourth, small, swift, strongly armed but lightly armored, torpedo-boat
-chasers, small gunboats for use in rivers and shallow coastal waters,
-despatch-boats, dynamite-cruisers, such as our American <i>Vesuvius</i>,
-tow-boats, and similar minor craft—the run-abouts of the naval service.</p>
-
-<p>Fifth, torpedo-boats.</p>
-
-<p>The material of all these is steel. Wood is no longer permitted even in
-the fittings of their cabins, because wood will splinter and burn.</p>
-
-<p>The great hull of a modern battle-ship, as described by Lieutenant S.
-A. Staunton, U. S. N., which supports and carries the vast weights of
-machinery, guns, and armor, aggregating perhaps more than ten thousand
-tons, is built of plates of rolled steel, varying from 1⅜ inches thick
-at the keel to &frac34; inch at the water-line. These are closely jointed and
-fitted, and bound together with straps, angle-irons, and brackets, so
-as to make a strong unyielding structure braced in all directions.
-Then, through the central part of the ship, at least, vertical plates
-are erected upon the frame and outside plating, which bear a second
-or inner bottom, thus forming the “double bottom” as high as the
-water-line, having the space between the inner and outer sheathing
-separated into a multitude of small water-tight cells, so that an
-injury to the outside hull would not cause the vessel to leak unless
-the inner bottom were also punctured.</p>
-
-<p>Throughout the whole length of the vessel, reaching from side to
-side and from the keel to the main deck, are many steel bulkheads,
-sufficiently strong to resist the pressure of the water, and
-communicating only by water-tight doors, so that even were an accident,
-such as a collision or running upon a rock, or an enemy’s shell, to
-open a hole through both bottoms, the ship would still float, because
-the inflowing water would be confined to a single compartment, leaving
-the rest of the ship dry and buoyant. Nothing less than the blow of a
-ram, smashing through everything and throwing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span> several compartments
-into one, would be likely to sink such a ship, and this is one reason
-why ramming has again become prominent in naval tactics.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_141">
-<img src="images/i_141.jpg" width="600" height="450" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE FIRST SEA-FIGHT OF MODERN WAR-SHIPS.</p>
-
-<p class="caption smallest">The Peruvian turret-ship “Huascar” between the fire of the Chilean
-ironclads “Almirante Cochrane” and “Blanco Encalada,” October 8, 1879.</p></div>
-
-<p>But while safety from sinking is thus reasonably assured, this is more
-a precaution of seaworthiness against the accidents of storms than
-toward injuries receivable in battle. Passenger and freight steamers
-now have the double bottoms and water-tight compartments, and the best
-of these have arrangements for mounting light but powerful guns upon
-their decks, so that they may be utilized by the government in a war
-emergency as light cruisers, as armed transports, as swift scouts, or
-in other highly important ways; they will then be coated with a light
-protective armor, but will not be expected to engage in a contest with
-a real fighting-vessel.</p>
-
-<p>The idea of armor-plate is, as has been said, scarcely half a
-century old, and the moment it was put on (amid the jeers of the old
-line-of-battle tars, who thought they had done all that the dignity
-of the profession permitted when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span> they arranged their rolled-up
-hammocks along the bulwarks to catch musket-balls, and spread nettings
-to prevent somewhat the flight of splinters) ingenious men began to
-improve their powder and strengthen their guns to overcome the new
-defenses. To meet these improvements armor has been increased and
-perfected, until now war-vessels are no longer “ships” in any proper
-sense of the word, but floating fortresses of steel, the names of whose
-defensive parts, even, have been borrowed from land fortifications,
-such as <i>turret</i> and <i>barbette</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_142">
-<img src="images/i_142.jpg" width="600" height="479" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “MASSACHUSETTS.”</p></div>
-
-<p>A limit to this defensive strength is marked in two directions.
-First, by the size it is possible to make a vessel, and still keep
-her seaworthy and manageable; and, second, by the weight of armor
-such a vessel can carry, in addition to the weight of the framework,
-machinery, guns, and other things necessary. These limits seemed to be
-reached some time ago in some of the monstrous battle-ships built in
-Europe, and when it was found that even while they were in construction
-rifled guns had been invented that would drive their projectiles
-through the thickest wall of wrought-iron or steel that these or any
-other vessels could carry, naval constructors began to despair of
-keeping ahead of the gun-makers, and there was even talk of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span> abandoning
-armor altogether, and fighting battles out with bared breasts as we
-used to do.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The percentage of weight which may be allotted to armor in the design
-of a ship limits the area which can be wholly protected, but often
-permits the partial protection of other areas of less importance to
-her vitality and destructive force. Motive power, steering-gear,
-and magazines stand first upon the list of those features demanding
-complete protection.... The heavy shells from an enemy’s guns may do
-many other forms of injury besides sinking a vessel and disabling her
-crew. They may strike and disable her engines, or pierce her boilers,
-causing disastrous explosions. They may injure her steering-gear,
-destroy the mechanism which controls her turrets and guns, or injure
-the guns themselves and their carriages. In every feature of offense
-which renders her a formidable and dangerous foe—her speed, her
-mobility, the fire of her guns—a man-of-war is dangerously vulnerable
-unless she be protected by armor, unless the enemy’s shot be rejected
-by plates which it cannot penetrate.</p></div>
-
-<p>Then came an invention that put a new face upon the matter,—the
-surface-hardening of plates, composed of a mixture of nickel with
-steel,—which, from one of its perfectors, is known as “Harveyizing” it.
-Other processes also are known. This gave to the surface of the metal
-such a flinty hardness that the heaviest and most highly tempered steel
-projectiles would almost invariably break to pieces when they struck
-it—the same projectiles that were able to punch a hole clear through a
-target-plate of ordinary wrought-steel twenty-two inches thick!</p>
-
-<p>Plates thus surface-hardened are now made in Europe, and as well, if
-not better, in the United States, where we have learned and taught the
-rest of the world how to make them by rolling—a much better, as well as
-cheaper, process than the former method of hammering them into shape.</p>
-
-<p>It was found that with these hard-surfaced plates much less thickness
-was required to contend successfully with the great guns opposed to
-them than had been the case before; and the great saving of weight
-enabled a much larger extent of armor to be borne upon a ship than was
-formerly possible, so arranged as to protect all her hull and vital
-parts.</p>
-
-<p>Thus, in a typical modern battle-ship, say 360 feet long, 72
-feet broad, and drawing 24 feet of water, having an armor of
-surface-hardened nickel-steel, this armor is thus disposed: amidships,
-and a quarter of her length behind the point of the prow, is built up a
-semicircular “barbette,” or wall, of the thickest armor, behind which
-is a “turret,” moving to the right or left through an arc equal to half
-the horizon, no higher than necessary to cover and work the guns, and
-having its motor mechanism fully protected by the barbette. This is the
-forward turret—a swinging fort, carrying with it, as it turns, two of
-the heaviest guns in the ship. </p>
-
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_144">
-<img src="images/i_144.jpg" width="600" height="382" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “INDIANA.”</p></div>
-
-<p>Half-way from the center to the stern stands the after turret and its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
-barbette, similarly built of the strongest armor,—ten to twelve inches
-thick,—and sweeping with its guns half the horizon.</p>
-
-<p>From a point just in front of the forward barbette two walls of the
-heaviest possible armor, reaching vertically from four and a half feet
-below the water-line (loaded) to three feet above it, extend diagonally
-backward to the sides of the ship, then continue along its side in a
-“belt” to points opposite the after barbette, where they bend inward
-as before and meet just aft of the after barbette; but hereafter the
-increased efficiency of armor, by further reducing its weight, will
-probably enable the armor-belts to be carried to the extreme ends of
-the ship, which otherwise can be so seriously damaged by an enemy as to
-interfere with the speed and control of a ship in action, even if it
-does not disable her.</p>
-
-<p>But while these upright walls will resist a direct shot, it is equally
-necessary to guard against a plunging fire, and therefore the space
-between the turrets, at least, must be roofed over with a steel deck,
-two or three inches thick, to deflect shot that come just over the top
-of the armor-belt.</p>
-
-<p>In addition to this, on each side of the vessel are erected one or
-two smaller turrets, carrying somewhat smaller guns than those of
-the forward and after turrets, and also protected by heavy barbettes
-which reach down to the armor-belt and thoroughly protect the turning
-mechanism, passage of ammunition, etc. These various upper parts are
-connected by defenses which may not resist the largest shells, but are
-safe against smaller shot.</p>
-
-<p>Now, what is the armament of this fortress which thus protects all the
-motive power and interior machinery of the ship, by which she can be
-made so terrible an engine of combative force? Well, it is as different
-from the bronze “long-toms” and carronades of the old three-deckers,
-or even from ten-inch smooth-bore “Dahlgrens” of the days of our Civil
-War, as is the ship itself from old-time models. In place of broadside
-batteries of forty or fifty cannon hidden in clouds of smoke, there are
-now six or eight big rifles, from whose muzzles wreaths of thin gas
-only drift to leeward; and, more striking still, in contrast, a ship
-is no longer comparatively helpless when headed or turned sternward
-to an enemy,—when the “raking,” formerly so justly dreaded, would be
-received,—but is rather more able to do damage in that position than by
-a “broadside.”</p>
-
-<p>The guns themselves are marvels of structure and power. All of those
-used in the United States navy are made by the government in the
-gun-shops at the Washington navy-yard, and are “built up.” The methods
-and tools required for this are the invention of Americans, as well as
-the complicated arrangements for closing the breech, and the carriages
-and mechanism for overcoming the tremendous recoil and handling the
-ponderous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span> ammunition; the latter, often weighing hundreds of pounds,
-is handed up to the gunners from the magazines below by hoists worked
-by electricity.</p>
-
-<p>The history of the development of heavy ordnance, especially that
-applied to naval uses, is one of the most interesting chapters in
-mechanics; and a surprising number of ways of making a ship’s cannon
-have been tried and rejected. Out of this two things seem now to be
-settled: namely, that a gun composed of steel in separate parts welded
-together is best, and that the best missile to shoot from it is a
-conical shell, very hard and heavy, yet containing an explosive small
-in quantity but exceedingly powerful.</p>
-
-<p>Such guns are built up of a tube or “core” of steel of the required
-size, upon which is shrunk a jacket, covering the rear, or breech half
-of the core, outside of which are shrunk on several broad hoops. The
-cutting out of the bore to exactly the proper caliber and the plowing
-of the spiral riflings put the gun in readiness for its breech-closing
-and other attachments. This process requires several months, involves
-large capital and powerful machinery, and good results imply the very
-highest workmanship.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_146">
-<img src="images/i_146.jpg" width="550" height="439" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE UNITED STATES CRUISER “BROOKLYN” (STERN VIEW).</p></div>
-
-<p>Such are the guns of modern men-of-war; and a first-class battle-ship
-carries four twelve- or thirteen-inch rifles (that is, having a bore
-twelve or thirteen inches in diameter), several eight- or ten-inch
-rifles, and many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span> smaller guns arranged to be fired with extraordinary
-speed, and hence called “rapid-fire” guns; while her upper works
-and “military tops” fairly bristle with fierce little six-, four-,
-and one-pounders,—revolving magazine rifles, capable of discharging
-rifle-balls as fast as a man can turn the crank.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_147">
-<img src="images/i_147.jpg" width="600" height="444" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">ON BOARD A BATTLE-SHIP GOING INTO ACTION. WORKING THE
-RAPID-FIRE GUNS.</p></div>
-
-<p>To give some idea of the size and power of one of the 13-inch guns,
-whose long muzzles, in pairs, project so far out of the turrets that
-hide their mountings and firing-crew, let me tell you that it is 40
-feet long, more than 4 feet in diameter, and weighs 60&frac12; tons. “It
-requires 550 pounds of powder to load it, and the projectile weighs
-half a ton. The muzzle-velocity of the projectile is 2100 feet per
-second, with the stated charge, and its energy is sufficient to send it
-through 26 inches of steel at a distance of 600 yards. At an elevation
-of 40 degrees the range of the gun will be not far from 15 miles.”</p>
-
-<p>In such a ship, deep down within the fortress is the massive and
-complicated machinery, steam and electric, upon which the life and
-activity of the whole structure depend. The power is generated in four
-enormous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span> boilers, seventeen feet in diameter and twenty in length,
-their steel shells one and a half inches thick, built to carry a
-working-pressure of 160 pounds to the square inch. Each pair of these
-boilers, placed fore and aft and side by side, is installed in a
-separate compartment, with fire-rooms at the ends. Every boiler has
-four furnaces in each end, which give eight to each fire-room, or a
-total of thirty-two. The two boiler compartments are separated by a
-water-tight bulkhead, and by a deep, broad coal-bunker. At the sides of
-the ship are also coal-bunkers, which supplement the heavy armor-belt
-by the protection of a mass of coal twelve feet in thickness—in itself
-a not inconsiderable earthwork, which might arrest the fragments of a
-bursting shell that had succeeded in piercing the armor. No casualty of
-naval combat can be worse than the penetration of high-pressure boilers
-by heavy shells. Their complete protection is an imperative condition,
-quite as important as the protection of the magazines.</p>
-
-<p>Such is a modern battle-ship—a “wonderful and complex instrument of
-warfare,” as Lieutenant Staunton has expressed it.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>She is filled [he tells us] with powerful agencies, all obedient to
-the control of man—the creatures of his brain and the servants of his
-will. Steam in its simple application drives her main engines and
-many auxiliaries. Steam transformed into hydraulic power moves her
-steering-gear and turns her turrets. Steam converted into electrical
-energy produces her incandescent and search-lights, works small
-motors in remote places, and fires her guns when desired. Every
-application of energy, every device of mechanism, finds its office
-somewhere in that vast hull, and the source of all the varied forms
-of power lies in the great boilers, far down below danger of shot
-and shell, under which grimy stokers are always shoveling coal.
-Decades of thought and study, experiment and failure, trial again
-with partial success, and repeated trials with complete success, have
-assigned to each agency its appropriate function, and perfected the
-mechanism through which its work is performed.</p></div>
-
-<p>These modern developments have added one entirely novel and tremendous
-adjunct to the fleet, in the torpedo-boat and its terrible weapon.
-These take the place to some extent of the fire-ship of a century ago,
-which was designed to injure the enemy not by silencing his guns or
-overcoming his gunners, but by insidiously destroying his ship itself.</p>
-
-<p>The torpedo is, in its simplest form, simply some arrangement of a
-powerful explosive to be set off beneath or against the bottom of a
-ship, and shatter or sink it. The idea is as old as gunpowder, but it
-is only in recent times that it has been made effective,—how effective
-we do not yet know.</p>
-
-<p>Torpedoes are used in two ways: one is by fixing the torpedo beneath
-the water, either to be exploded by means of a percussion-cap when the
-ship runs against it, or from the shore by means of electricity. Such
-arrangements as this, called submarine mines, are regarded as a most
-important<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span> means of defending harbors against hostile attack. During
-our Civil War they were extensively used by the Confederates, and were
-sometimes successful, as when one destroyed the monitor <i>Tecumseh</i> in
-Mobile harbor, during Farragut’s famous attack there in 1864.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_149">
-<img src="images/i_149.jpg" width="500" height="346" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE MONITOR “TECUMSEH” SUNK BY A TORPEDO AT MOBILE,
-1864.</p></div>
-
-<p>The former class, for which the word <i>torpedoes</i> is now reserved,
-includes explosive agents which are to be placed or sent against a
-ship’s bottom at sea and exploded there. Various devices of that kind,
-also, have been used for a long time in naval warfare. The Confederates
-tried hard to destroy several Northern vessels in the blockading
-squadron by devising very small, half-submerged boats, towing torpedoes
-astern, or else projecting on a long spar from their bows; and now and
-then they succeeded, as when one of the latter kind was made to sink
-the <i>Housatonic</i> off Charleston.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_150_1">
-<img src="images/i_150_1.jpg" width="400" height="270" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE SEARCH-LIGHT REVEALING THE TORPEDO-BOAT.</p></div>
-
-<p>Then there have been invented, during the past fifty years, several
-cigar-shaped machines, which, by means of a chemical or compressed-air
-engine or clockwork, or some other application of power that might
-keep motive machinery within them going long enough, could be launched
-from shore or from another vessel and sent under water against a
-hostile ship. At first these were made to glide along just beneath the
-surface, carrying little flags that could be seen, and trailing two
-electric wires, enabling a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span> person, by means of electric currents,
-to direct their flight; but latterly ingenuity has devised such an
-arrangement of rudders and self-acting balances within the torpedo’s
-mechanism that it will continue perfectly straight upon the course
-it is aimed for, swerving neither right nor left, up nor down, and
-will explode the instant it touches an object hard enough to jar the
-delicate cap of fulminate in its snout. This latter kind, called the
-automobile (self-moving) torpedo, is now almost exclusively used, and
-some modification of the Whitehead is most popular. It is cigar-shaped,
-and about twelve feet in length; the forward third is filled with
-gun-cotton—in quantity sufficiently powerful, if accurately applied, to
-ruin almost instantly the greatest battle-ship afloat.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_150_2">
-<img src="images/i_150_2.jpg" width="300" height="372" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A SELF-MOVING TORPEDO ON ITS WAY<br />
-TO ATTACK A MAN-OF-WAR.</p></div>
-
-<p>All large war-ships are now fitted with tubes, opening near the
-water-line in various parts of the hull, which form gun-like exits for
-these terrible weapons, which are set in motion by a puff of gunpowder;
-but in addition to this every maritime government now has a number
-(Great Britain has more than 250) of small, swift steamers designed
-wholly for this purpose and called torpedo-boats. Most of them are a
-hundred feet or so in length, and intended to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span> accompany the fleet
-wherever it goes and in all weathers; but some are so small that they
-may be carried on the deck of a big cruiser.</p>
-
-<p>All are made long, low, and narrow, and the speed of many of them
-exceeds thirty miles an hour. There is almost nothing to catch the wind
-or show above deck except a pair of short, flattened smoke-stacks, one
-behind the other; and the steersman stands, with only his head and
-shoulders visible, in a little box with windows that serves the purpose
-of a wheel-house. A mere wire railing saves the crew from sliding off
-the deck, and in action everybody stays below. No weight is carried
-that can be avoided, and the engines, taking steam from two boilers,
-are as powerful as can be packed into the space at command. Usually
-only coal enough for a few hours’ steaming is carried, and every bushel
-of it is carefully selected as to quality, and is so treated and
-intelligently fed to the furnaces as to make the hottest possible fire,
-although never a spark must escape from the smoke-stack to betray the
-vessel in the darkness.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_151">
-<img src="images/i_151.jpg" width="600" height="389" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A TORPEDO-BOAT AT FULL SPEED.</p></div>
-
-<p>Next to speed the most important quality is ability to turn quickly,
-upon which might often depend the safety of the audacious little craft.</p>
-
-<p>Torpedo-boats, however, are designed for a wider service than simply
-to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span> carry and discharge the frightful weapon from which they take their
-name. They are to the navy what scouts and skirmishers are to a land
-army. They form the cavalry of the sea, of which the cruisers are the
-infantry, and the battle-ships and monitors the artillery arm. They
-must spy out the position of the enemy’s fleet, hover about his flanks
-or haunt his anchorage to ascertain what he is about and what he means
-to do next. They must act as the pickets of their own fleet, patrolling
-the neighborhood, or waiting and watching, concealed among islands or
-in inlets and river-mouths, ready to hasten away to the admiral with
-warning of any movement of the adversary.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_152">
-<img src="images/i_152.jpg" width="350" height="230" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">ONE FORM OF SUBMARINE TORPEDO-BOAT.</p></div>
-
-<p>It is not their business to fight (except rarely, in the one particular
-way), but rather to pry and sneak and run, for the benefit of the fleet
-they serve.</p>
-
-<p>But to insure all these fine results, both officers and men must be
-taught the art. Constant instruction and drilling are necessary, and
-in each navy a regular school of torpedo-practice is maintained, where
-the subject is studied in every way. In the United States such a school
-is kept at the Newport (R. I.) Torpedo Station, where the torpedoes
-themselves are fitted for use and supplied to the ships (the loaded
-war-heads are kept separately in the ship’s magazine), and where one or
-more torpedo-boats are reserved for drilling purposes.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_153">
-<img src="images/i_153.jpg" width="600" height="447" alt="" />
-<p class="right smallest">COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY C. E. BOLLES, BROOKLYN, N. Y.</p>
-
-<p class="caption">THE UNITED STATES BATTLE-SHIP “MAINE.”<br />
-
-<span class="smallest">Blown up in the harbor of Havana, February 15, 1898.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>But a worse and more insidious foe than even these sneaking, hiding,
-surface torpedo-boats threatens us in the submarine torpedo-boat, which
-inventors have been experimenting with since naval warfare first began.
-It is said that twenty-five hundred years ago divers were lowered
-into the water in a simply constructed air-box, to perforate the
-wooden bottom of an adversary’s war-galley and sink it. Again, in our
-Revolutionary War, a tiny walnut-shaped boat was made by an American,
-which was actually tried. It would hold one man, and air enough for him
-to breathe for half an hour. He would close the hatch, let in enough
-water to sink him a little way, and then scull himself along by means
-of a screw-bladed stern-oar until he got underneath the keel of an
-anchored vessel, to which, by ingenious means, he would attach a can of
-gunpowder to be fired by clockwork, giving him time to get away. It was
-actually tried and nearly succeeded. Robert<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span> Fulton, who made the first
-success of the steamboat, tried for years to contrive a submarine boat
-that would work, and succeeded so far as to scare British blockaders in
-1812 very badly indeed; and the Confederates repeated the scare when
-the North was blockading their ports in the Civil War.</p>
-
-<p>The great advantage of a submarine boat is, of course, its
-invisibility, and its safety from shot even if discovered; but the
-difficulties of progress and control as to depth and direction under
-water, and at the same time effective appliance of the explosive and
-safe retreat, are so many that they have as yet been only partly
-overcome. If the thing is ever accomplished, naval warfare will be
-demoralized until some adequate means be found to combat this unseen,
-destroying agency.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_154">
-<img src="images/i_154.jpg" width="386" height="500" alt="vesuvius in action" />
-</div>
-
-<p>The principal agent in submarine attacks would probably be some form
-of dynamite, which, inhuman as its use seems, is slowly but surely
-taking its place among the weapons of war. The United States has one
-vessel primarily designed to employ dynamite by hurling it in the form
-of shells. This volcanic craft is suitably named <i>Vesuvius</i>, and is
-a small, swift vessel having long tubes slanting upward through her
-forward deck, as shown in the illustration.</p>
-
-<p>These tubes are the muzzles of great air-guns, through which she sends
-darts loaded with dynamite to fall upon a hostile ship or fort. It
-would not be safe, to say the least, to fire such bombs with gunpowder;
-and therefore pumps and engines in her interior compress air until it
-has acquired an expansive force sufficient for the purpose. When one
-of the darts has been laid in the breech of the tube, down beneath the
-deck, and suitably closed in, a valve is opened, the compressed air
-acts like burning powder, and away goes the dart, in a graceful curve
-to its target. In this case, of course, it is the vessel rather than
-the immovable gun that is aimed, and good marksmanship depends upon
-accurate calculation of distance; but remarkable shooting has been
-done. This system has never yet been tried in actual warfare, and may
-prove valuable chiefly in clearing harbors of mines.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">THE MERCHANTS OF THE SEA</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_155.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="ornate capital T" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">The</span> history of shipping in an earlier chapter will also answer as a
-history of early international commerce. It began with the Egyptians
-and Phenicians, and was confined to their parts of the Mediterranean
-until after the middle ages, when it moved steadily to the western
-borders of Europe.</p>
-
-<p>How great, rich, and influential were Tyre and its people we have
-already seen. A thousand years before the Christian era they controlled
-the commerce of the ancient world by reason of their wisdom as traders
-and their skill and energy as navigators and seamen. Turn to the
-twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, and see how the Phenician metropolis
-was regarded, even in the time of that prophet, six hundred years
-before Christ. These Syrians had gradually extended their commerce
-until it took in the whole known world; and by their caravans to
-and from the interior of Arabia, Persia, India, and the Soudan, by
-their trains (perhaps of pack-horses) across Europe, by their marine
-expeditions to the Nile,—which they forced open to trade, for ancient
-Egypt was much like China in its exclusiveness,—and by their ships to
-all the Mediterranean ports, and up and down the Atlantic coast, they
-gathered and exchanged in the bazaars of Tyre and Sidon the products,
-manufactures, and luxuries of every country that had anything to sell.
-To the Phenicians, indeed, was ascribed, by the Latin and Greek writers
-of a few centuries later, the invention of navigation; and even when
-Phenicia had become of little account as a nation, its conquerors noted
-with admiration the skill of the men of that coast in seamanship.
-“They steered by the pole-star, which the Greeks therefore called the
-Phenician star; and all their vessels, from the common round <i>gaulos</i>
-to the great Tarshish ships,—the East-Indiamen, so to speak, of the
-ancient world,—had a speed which the Greeks never rivaled.”</p>
-
-<p>Later, in the days of the Roman supremacy, the trading-ships were as
-important to the country as its soldiers, for nearly every free man was
-in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span> the army, and the slaves made poor farmers. A large part of the
-grain, as well as cattle, to supply the wants of the people, had to be
-brought from Egypt, which was pretty sure to have “corn,” as the Bible
-calls it, when the rest of the world was suffering from short crops.
-Egypt supplied grain to Rome during the second Punic war, thus enabling
-her to resist the invasion of Carthage, and it is possible that Rome’s
-later political alliance with Egypt was largely due to her interest in
-Egyptian crops. Large fleets of grain-ships, convoyed by armed vessels,
-were continually passing between the African coast and the Tiber, and
-so many were the risks they ran of wreck or capture, that the arrival
-of a flotilla with its precious freight of food was always a cause of
-rejoicing, at any rate, among the poor.</p>
-
-<p>These merchant ships of classical times were broader and heavier
-than the war-galleys, and although they carried a few oars to help
-themselves in a difficulty, they ordinarily moved by means of sails,
-probably lugs. One of the grain-ships plying between Egypt and Italy
-about 150 <span class="smcap">A. D.</span>, according to Lucian, was one hundred
-and eighty feet long, slightly more than one fourth as broad, and
-forty-three and a half feet deep inside,— more like a barge than a
-“ship.” The largest used in this trade would carry about two hundred
-and fifty tons. The transports that accompanied one of Justinian’s
-fleets, <span class="smcap">A. D.</span> 533, are stated to have carried one hundred and
-sixty to two hundred tons of supplies each.</p>
-
-<p>These Roman vessels were made of pine, and were coated with a
-composition of tar and wax, then painted, often with elaborate
-decorations in bright colors, with pigments mixed with melted wax. Now
-and then one was built of truly vast proportions, as that one which
-brought from Egypt to Rome the first of the stolen obelisks.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_157">
-<img src="images/i_157.jpg" width="300" height="438" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A CAPTAIN IN THE MERCHANT MARINE.</p></div>
-
-<p>With that grand awakening of interest in education, industry, and
-discovery which took place in the fourteenth century, the city of
-Venice gained the lead in power, and her merchants became the most
-enterprising and wealthy. It was the expansion of commerce that urged
-the explorations that marked the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
-for by this time Venice had her banks—the first in the world to
-approach the character of modern banks—and her exchange on the famous
-Rialto bridge; Genoa was in close rivalry; Spain was gathering immense
-quantities of gold in South America; and England was coming to the
-front as a maritime power. The trade with Cathay—as India, China, and
-the Oriental islands were called collectively—was chiefly by caravans
-across the Persian deserts, and Spain, England, and Holland had
-small shares in it, since the only water-route known was through the
-Mediterranean and Red seas, where, between the perils of the ocean,
-the extortionate charges and stealings of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span> the Arabs (who carried the
-cargoes from vessel to vessel across the Isthmus of Suez), and the risk
-of capture by Algerian pirates, there was little chance left for profit
-to either merchants or ship-owners.</p>
-
-<p>To western Europe, then, Vasco de Gama’s discovery of the route around
-the Cape of Good Hope was a long advantage, and England and Holland
-at least were quick to seize it. The great “East India Companies” of
-the Dutch and English were formed by a group of powerful merchants
-in London and in Amsterdam, who were given vast privileges by their
-governments in respect to trading in the East. The Dutch company was
-not founded until 1602, two years after the English company, but it
-soon became the more prominent of the two, and was one of the principal
-means by which the Netherlands secured the preponderance of the
-carrying trade of the world, bringing to her ports, by the middle of
-the seventeenth century, almost all the commerce previously enjoyed by
-Cadiz, Lisbon, and Antwerp, and making very serious inroads upon that
-of London and Bristol. The Dutch East India ships, copied from the
-Genoese carracks, were the biggest merchant vessels then afloat, well
-able to cope with many of the war-ships; and two hundred of them were
-at this time engaged in the Asiatic trade alone.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_158">
-<img src="images/i_158.jpg" width="445" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A CLIPPER ESCAPING FROM THE “ALABAMA.”</p></div>
-
-<p>It was in aid of the English rival company not only, but as an attempt
-to save and revive the commercial position of England generally, that
-Cromwell’s “navigation laws” were enacted, prohibiting the carriage
-of goods to or from British shores except in ships owned and manned
-by Englishmen,— laws that were aimed directly at the Dutch, and led
-to the long wars of the latter half of the seventeenth century. These
-were called wars for the supremacy of the sea, but actually they were a
-prolonged struggle for the biggest share of the world’s trade, which is
-the only real value<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span> of the “supremacy of the sea.” It is a saying that
-“trade follows the flag,” and so it does; but at the beginning the flag
-goes were the trade is to be had.</p>
-
-<p>These companies were so mixed up in the politics of their respective
-governments that it would be a long task, although entertaining, to
-trace their growth, which is really that of western civilization in the
-East. They equipped fleets of merchant and war vessels, established
-forts, carried on small wars along the Oriental coasts, and were really
-little kingdoms within kingdoms, because of their wide monopoly,
-enormous wealth, and the national importance of all their enterprises.
-The final result was that, as Great Britain finally overcame the Dutch
-and French at home, so her East India Company ousted them from India;
-but it was not until 1858 that old “John Company,” which had come to
-be regarded by the natives of India as the government itself, was
-dissolved, and resigned its territories to the crown and a system of
-trade open to all the world.</p>
-
-<p>Those were slow and costly times compared with the present, though
-seeming to us full of a romance impossible now. A voyage around the
-world occupied three years, and to go from London to Calcutta and
-back took from New Year’s to Christmas under the most favorable
-circumstances. Another important change, too, has gradually come about.
-Formerly, the vessels were owned almost entirely by the merchants
-themselves, or by a company of them; they paid all a ship’s expenses,
-and put into her a cargo of their own wares. They would send to China,
-for instance, cotton goods, household furniture, hatchets, tools,
-cutlery and other hardware, farming implements, and fancy goods of all
-sorts. In return the vessels would bring silks, tea, and porcelain,
-which would go into the owners’ warehouses and be sold in their own
-shops. Shipper, importer, and merchant were all one.</p>
-
-<p>Now this is changed. The importers and merchants of London, Hamburg,
-and New York are not often those who own vessels and bring their own
-goods. Instead of this they have agents, who live permanently in each
-of the foreign ports, where they buy the merchandise they want and hire
-a vessel, or the needed space in a vessel, belonging to somebody else
-to bring them home. By the old way, the nation which had anything to
-sell carried it to the nation that would buy it, and brought back the
-best thing it could get in exchange; now the merchants go to various
-parts of the world, buy their cargoes, and order them sent home, in
-substantially the same way as you go a-shopping in town.</p>
-
-<p>This has brought out a new department of sea-labor, unknown, as a
-class, a century ago—the business of carrying goods which the owners of
-the vessels have no property in. In London, New York, Hamburg, and all
-other seaboard cities of this and other countries, the great majority
-of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span> shipping is owned, not by the merchants of the city, but by
-“transportation companies,” who agree to carry cargoes at a certain
-rate.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_160">
-<img src="images/i_160.jpg" width="550" height="389" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE SALOON OF A SAILING PACKET-SHIP, ABOUT 1840.</p></div>
-
-<p>Merchant vessels may be divided into three classes, of which the first
-includes steamships and sailing-vessels planned primarily for freight
-transportation, which run back and forth between certain ports, and
-so constitute “lines” for freight. Such lines exist along even the
-remotest coasts, so that goods may be shipped directly, or by a single
-transfer, from any given seaport to almost any other in the world.
-Some of these lines, sailing between certain ports, are devoted to
-particular uses, such as those of oil-steamers and cattle-steamers. The
-oil-steamers run between America and Europe with American petroleum,
-and in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean with oil from Russia; the
-entire holds are divided into vast iron tanks for this liquid, which is
-poured into and pumped out of them as into and out of a great barrel.
-The cattle-steamers are specially arranged for the transportation
-of live stock, but one line, running between America and England,
-also carries passengers at a cheap rate. The second class of vessels
-consists of those which make the transportation of passengers their
-first object, loading their holds with first-class freight, for which
-high rates are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span> paid in consideration of its swift delivery. The
-third class includes what are known as “tramp” steamers, which run
-irregularly, as the old sailing-vessels used to do, picking up cargoes
-wherever they find them and carrying them to any port. They are often
-of great size and power, but being under less close supervision are
-often less careful as to the safety of crews and cargoes, and are
-sometimes unseaworthy. They are always ready to answer any sudden
-demand for ships, their owners keeping watch of the chances and
-telegraphing to their captains where to go for their next cargoes.
-Without the submarine telegraph these tramp steamers could scarcely
-compete with the regular lines; but, besides the great transoceanic
-cables, all the sea-coasts are now festooned with electric cables,
-which have frequent stations and connect the important ports of America
-and Europe with those of Africa, Persia, India, the Spice Islands,
-Australia, and New Zealand, and there is now a plan to run a cable
-across the Pacific between America and New Zealand, by way of the
-Sandwich Islands, Samoa, and Fiji.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_161">
-<img src="images/i_161.jpg" width="400" height="336" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A CORNER IN THE SALOON OF A MODERN STEAMSHIP.</p></div>
-
-<p>The passenger-ship is a distinctly modern feature of marine carriage.
-In former days the few persons who were obliged to cross the seas on
-business errands, and the fewer who went abroad for health or pleasure
-or the love of travel, had to accept such rough accommodations as the
-ordinary merchant ships afforded. But as soon as the East and West
-Indies were added to the map of the world, and colonies of Europeans
-began to settle on distant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span> coasts and islands, the amount of travel
-justified owners of vessels in enlarging cabins and providing comforts
-likely to induce patronage of their lines. Even two hundred and
-twenty-five years ago the voyage between India and England around
-the Cape of Good Hope, though it became somewhat tedious, because it
-lasted six or seven months, was by no means a miserable experience in a
-well-found ship. Thus Dr. John Fryer has recorded of such a sea-journey
-in 1682 that “it passed away merrily with good wine and no bad musick;
-but the life of all good company, and an honest commander, who fed us
-with fresh provisions of turkies, geese, ducks, hens, sucking-pigs,
-sheep, goats, etc.”</p>
-
-<p>A century later, when England had come firmly into possession of
-India, and thousands of her officers, troops, and traders, with their
-families, were colonizing her ports, there were demanded the largest
-and finest ships that could be built, combining accommodations for
-many passengers with great cargo capacity. Such were the great East
-Indiamen; and in those leisurely days a trip half-way round the world
-on one of these roomy old vessels was a continuous pleasure to almost
-every one that undertook it.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The ship was a bit of Old England afloat, where the passenger rented
-for so many months a well-lighted, roomy, unfurnished apartment,
-which, according to his taste and means, he fitted up for the voyage
-with numberless comforts and sea stores that none but a yachtsman
-would think of cumbering himself with at sea to-day; and, reading
-narratives of the old long sea-voyages, one is constantly coming
-across expressions of regret by passengers when they “took leave of
-the good ship that for so many months had been their floating home.”
-These fine old passenger sailing-ships were, like a man-of-war,
-entirely dismantled at the end of each homeward voyage, and underwent
-a complete overhaul and refit before starting out again on an outward
-one. Passengers usually sold their state-room furniture by auction on
-board the ship on her arrival in port.</p></div>
-
-<p>Such a ship, the Atlantic packets, and even men-of-war bound on a long
-blockading cruise, did not hesitate to stow aboard all the live stock
-that room could be found for, sometimes by comical devices. In that
-book of charming reminiscences of ways and means afloat before the days
-of quick steam transit, “Old Sea Wings,” Mr. Leslie has a chapter which
-he calls “The Old Ship-Farm,” where one may learn curious particulars
-of this matter.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The man in charge of this part of the stores was the ship’s butcher,
-and he had as “mate,” or assistant, a youth of all work known to all
-sailors as “Jemmy Ducks.” Their barn, or storehouse, was especially
-the great long-boat, which often looked more like a model of Noah’s
-ark than a craft serviceable in case of shipwreck.</p>
-
-<p>Always securely stowed amidships, well lashed down and housed
-over, the boat, as she lay upon the ship’s deck, was full of live
-provender, being divided, as to her lower hold, into pens for sheep
-and pigs, while upon the first floor, or main deck, quacked ducks
-and geese, and above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span> them (literally in the cock-loft) were coops
-for another kind of poultry. This great central dep&ocirc;t was closely
-surrounded by other small farm-buildings, the most important being
-the cow-house, where, after a short run ashore on the marshes at the
-end of each voyage, a well-seasoned animal of the snug Alderney breed
-chewed the cud in sweet content. In fact, when, in the old days, a
-passenger-ship began her voyage, the hull of her clumsy long-boat was
-nearly hidden by the number of temporary pens and sheds required to
-house the live stock for the supply of her cabin table; and with its
-many farm-yard and homelike sounds a ship was, even then, more like a
-small bit of the world afloat than it is now.</p></div>
-
-<p>There was always regular traffic between America and Europe, especially
-with Great Britain, and the rapid growth of emigration to the United
-States and Canada made it profitable, early in this century, to put
-on fast-sailing packet-ships, making voyages, at intervals of a
-month, between London and New York. By 1840 a man might find a large,
-well-ordered ship departing every week or so for the transatlantic
-passage, which usually required less than a month going east, but might
-be two weeks longer coming west. Their cabins were as comfortable and
-perhaps more homelike than any seen now, and quite as pretty, with
-their white and gold paint, cut-glass door and locker knobs, damask
-hangings, dimity bed-curtains, and other old-fashioned niceties; and
-the fare was abundant and varied, as it ought to be in a neat ship with
-a small dairy aboard, and perhaps a green-salad garden planted in the
-jolly-boat. None of these packets were more popular than those of the
-well-remembered Black Ball Line. </p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_164">
-<img src="images/i_164.jpg" width="600" height="382" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">FAIR WEATHER ON THE DECK OF A CLIPPER-SHIP CARRYING
-GOLD-SEEKERS TO CALIFORNIA IN 1849.</p></div>
-
-<p>The steerage passengers were not so well off then, though they seemed
-to stand the voyage quite as well as nowadays. The fare was twenty-five
-dollars, and the passenger found himself “in everything but fire and
-water.” “Steerage passengers then had to cook their own victuals,
-weather permitting, at an open galley-fire on the waist-deck; ... but
-in anything like rough weather, all steerage passengers had either
-to run the chance of getting constantly wet with salt water or keep
-below.” The ’tween-decks space allotted to them was almost completely
-filled by rows of bunks, built in each port by the ship’s carpenter,
-in three tiers, one above the other, though the ceiling was scarcely
-seven feet from the floor; and when in a stormy time the hatches were
-closed the only way the crowd could find room was by most of it stowing
-itself away in the bunks, while a few tried to sit or lie on the
-luggage piled in the narrow aisles. The only light was that of a few
-candle or whale-oil lanterns, and in a very bad storm everybody came
-near smothering, for then it was impossible to ventilate the steerage
-properly without flooding it. Considering that all the provisions for
-the steerage people were kept in this crowded, damp, and fearfully
-close room, it is marvelous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span> that a pestilence did not break out during
-every voyage, but, in fact, sickness was rare.</p>
-
-<p>The introduction of steam into oceanic navigation was experimented with
-as soon as river steamboats were successfully built. The first vessel
-to go across the ocean by the aid of a steam-engine is said to have
-been the <i>Savannah</i>. This vessel, built in Savannah, Ga., and having a
-steam-engine and paddle-wheels, certainly crossed to Liverpool in 1819;
-but it is asserted that she sailed all the way, using her steam very
-little, if at all, although making the trip in twenty-two days. In 1825
-the English steamer <i>Enterprise</i> went from London to Calcutta; but it
-was not until some years later that ocean navigation by steam became
-successful in the beginning of operations by the Cunard Company in 1833.</p>
-
-<p>These first steamers were side-wheelers, and their huge boilers and
-simple engines consumed so much fuel that the space taken up by the
-coal, added to that devoted to passengers, left little room for cargo.
-Moreover, their speed was less, often, than that of the “clippers,” so
-that for some time the sailing-packets maintained their competition.
-The adoption of the screw propeller, in place of the costly and
-cumbersome side-paddles, and the perfection of the compound marine
-engine, which effected a great saving in fuel, soon established the
-superiority of steam navigation for passenger service, fast freights,
-and service in war, yet even these improvements were not fairly brought
-about until the first half of the present century had gone; and sails
-are not yet abandoned, not only because they steady a vessel in a gale,
-and may help her decidedly when the wind is fair, but may save her
-altogether in case of the disabling of her machinery.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Great modifications and improvements on old models have grown out of
-the employment of steam and the screw, and human invention has been
-taxed to the uttermost to combine economy of space and expense with
-the various needs of different climes, or special cargoes, or the
-demands of a traveling public that is growing more fastidious every
-day. The most obvious changes in naval construction have been in the
-greatly elongated hull, the enormous dimensions aimed at, and the all
-but universal employment of iron. When the first steamship crossed
-the ocean the proportions of ships averaged three to five beams in
-length.... But it was discovered that with a given power and depth
-and beam the length could be increased without materially affecting
-the speed, thus adding to the carrying capacity of steam. Great
-length to beam, however, does not necessarily imply great speed; the
-speed of beamy vessels has too often been demonstrated. Fineness of
-lines is equally essential, together with the proper distribution
-of weights, and the like. The great average speed exhibited by the
-modern steamship is due in large part to the momentum of such a vast
-weight, which, once started, has a tremendous force.</p></div>
-
-<p>Long after the transatlantic steamships were regularly running, sixteen
-or seventeen days was considered a good passage between New York
-and Liverpool. Then the Inman and White Star lines began to see the
-importance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span> of faster speed, and their rivalry had cut this estimate
-in two by 1870, and ten years later the Guion Line’s <i>Arizona</i> and
-other crack boats took a full day off that. Since then there has been a
-steady improvement in speed, as is shown by the table below; and this
-seems to have followed proportionately the steady increase in length.
-The ships of 1850 never reached 300 feet in length, and few were over
-2300 tons in burden measurement. By 1880 almost all the first-class
-“liners” of the world exceeded 450 feet, and some soon approached
-600, as the <i>City of Rome</i> (586 feet, 8826 tons), and several of the
-famous Hamburg liners, White Stars, and Cunarders nearly equaled her
-in dimensions (<i>Paris</i> and <i>New York</i>, 580 feet each; <i>Teutonic</i> and
-<i>Majestic</i>, 582 feet); while some of the more recent boats are even
-longer, as <i>Campania</i> and <i>Lucania</i>, 620 feet, and the gigantic <i>Kaiser
-Wilhelm der Grosse</i>, 648 feet. Two other ships, now planned, will
-considerably exceed this length. The total number of transatlantic
-passenger-steamships regularly sailing from New York alone is now
-between 90 and 100, belonging to 14 different lines. The table of
-speed-records between New York and Queenstown, since the time was
-reduced to less than six days, is as follows:</p>
-
-<div class="center">
-<table class="my90" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="sailing times and dates">
-<tr>
-<th class="tdr normal smaller vertb">Year.</th>
-<th class="tdc normal smaller vertb">Steamer.</th>
-<th class="tdc normal smaller vertb">Line.</th>
-<th class="tdc normal smaller vertb">Direction.</th>
-<th class="tdc normal smaller vertb">Date.</th>
-<th class="tdc normal smaller vertb">Days.</th>
-<th class="tdc normal smaller">Time.<br />Hours.</th>
-<th class="tdc normal smaller vertb">Min.</th>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl">1882</td>
-<td class="tdl"><i>Alaska</i></td>
-<td class="tdl">Guion</td>
-<td class="tdl">Eastward</td>
-<td class="tdl">May 30 to June 6</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 6</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 2</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 0</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl">1891</td>
-<td class="tdl"><i>Majestic</i></td>
-<td class="tdl">White Star</td>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 5</td>
-<td class="tdc">18</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 8</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl">1891</td>
-<td class="tdl"><i>Teutonic</i></td>
-<td class="tdl">White Star</td>
-<td class="tdl">Westward</td>
-<td class="tdl">Aug. 13-19</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 5</td>
-<td class="tdc">16</td>
-<td class="tdc">31</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl">1892</td>
-<td class="tdl"><i>Paris</i></td>
-<td class="tdl">American</td>
-<td class="tdl">Westward</td>
-<td class="tdl">Aug. 14-19</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 5</td>
-<td class="tdc">14</td>
-<td class="tdc">24</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl">1893</td>
-<td class="tdl"><i>Campania</i></td>
-<td class="tdl">Cunard</td>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td>&nbsp;</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 5</td>
-<td class="tdc">12</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 7</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl">1894</td>
-<td class="tdl"><i>Lucania</i></td>
-<td class="tdl">Cunard</td>
-<td class="tdl">Westward</td>
-<td class="tdl">Sept. 8-14</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 5</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 8</td>
-<td class="tdc">38</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl">1894</td>
-<td class="tdl"><i>Lucania</i></td>
-<td class="tdl">Cunard</td>
-<td class="tdl">Eastward</td>
-<td class="tdl">Oct. 21-26</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 5</td>
-<td class="tdc">&nbsp; 7</td>
-<td class="tdc">23</td>
-</tr></table></div>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The approximate distance between Sandy Hook (light-ship), New York,
-and Queenstown (Roche’s Point) is 2800 miles. The fastest day’s run
-on record, however, was made by the <i>Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse</i>,
-of the Nord Deutscher Lloyds Line, averaging 22.35 knots (or
-nautical miles, of 6080 feet each) per hour, equal to about 25&frac12; land
-miles. From Sandy Hook to Queenstown deduct 4 hours 22 minutes for
-difference in time. Queenstown to Sandy Hook add 4 hours 22 minutes
-for difference in time.</p></div>
-
-<p>This eager rivalry in respect to speed, which insures not only a larger
-and more influential passenger service, but increased business in fast
-freight and in the carriage of mail—both highly remunerative—is only
-one feature of the sharp competition between these ocean carriers as to
-which shall offer the greatest advantages, and this is of benefit to
-the public, though it has not greatly cheapened fares. </p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_167">
-<img src="images/i_167.jpg" width="406" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">EMIGRANT PASSENGERS EMBARKING UPON A TRANSATLANTIC
-“LINER.”</p></div>
-
-<p>Men travel far more now than they were wont in the time of “good Queen
-Bess,” or even of our own grandfathers, and the few travelers for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
-pleasure of those days would scarcely believe their eyes if they could
-look into the floating palaces—almost cities—in which we brave old
-ocean now. A ship of one of the better passenger lines is a little
-world in itself, containing almost all the appliances of the best
-modern hotels on shore, and reducing the inevitable inconveniences of
-life on shipboard by clever devices of every sort. In the one matter of
-ventilation the ingenuity of the builders is particularly taxed. Money
-is spent lavishly in the finishing and furnishing of these great ships,
-not to mention the expense of running them, which sometimes amounts in
-cost of fuel, food, and wages to $5000 a day.</p>
-
-<p>The steamship lines between New York and Great Britain do not steer
-straight across the Atlantic, but on their way to this country keep
-well to the northward, so as to get to the west of the Gulf Stream, and
-into the favorable current flowing south from Baffin’s Bay; then they
-skirt Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Cod. Going east, however,
-the steamers—and sailing-vessels too—keep farther south, and work
-along with the Gulf Stream as far as they can. From Europe to South
-America, or through the Straits of Magellan on their way to the South
-Sea islands or Australia (though this route is not often taken), or to
-the Pacific coast of the Americas, vessels keep close down the African
-coast, and then steer straight ahead from Guinea to Brazil, and on
-down the American coast. (Put a map before you and you will understand
-these courses better.) Sailing-vessels to Europe or the United States
-from Cape Horn, however, would swing far out into the South Atlantic
-to avoid heading against the southward coast-current and to get the
-benefit of the southwest trade-wind and the equatorial currents.
-Between New York and the Cape of Good Hope the track is nearly straight.</p>
-
-<p>In the Pacific, the steamer-route between San Francisco or Vancouver
-and China and Japan, instead of being as direct as a parallel of
-latitude, takes a southerly course when bound west, and a northerly
-course when bound east, the exact lines varying with the seasons as the
-prevailing winds and currents change. What these winds and currents
-are is explained in another chapter; but it is interesting to note
-that there is a difference of many miles in the ordinary westerly and
-easterly courses, the latter being much the shorter, although the
-vessels of the Canadian Pacific Line often sail so far north with the
-Japan warm current as to sight the Aleutian Islands. Sailing-vessels,
-moreover, curve so much farther south than steamers in going west from
-San Francisco, in order to take advantage of the equatorial current and
-the trade-winds, that the space is a thousand miles north and south
-between ships outward bound and those coming home. Between California
-and Honolulu a steamer takes a bee-line, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span> sailing-vessels find it
-best to make detours. In summer, when outward bound, this amounts to
-steering straight northward until under latitude forty degrees, before
-turning westward, making an angular course that looks very unnecessary
-to a landsman.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_169">
-<img src="images/i_169.jpg" width="600" height="377" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A “WHALEBACK” FREIGHT STEAMER, ALSO ADAPTED TO PASSENGER
-SERVICE.</p></div>
-
-<p>I have said that the finding of a sea-route to the East around the Cape
-of Good Hope was a great boon to western Europe, and advanced commerce.
-It remained so until within the last seventy-five years. Lately,
-the corsairs being out of the way, and safety guaranteed in Egypt,
-merchants and sailors both began to wish they had a shorter route
-between England and India. Then, with immense labor and sacrifice, the
-canal was cut across the Isthmus of Suez, and commerce returned to its
-ancient channel through the Red Sea, saving thousands of miles of weary
-distance.</p>
-
-<p>From the end of the Red Sea at Aden, the tracks of steamers both
-ways are straight courses to Bombay or Ceylon, and thence right up
-to Calcutta, across to Singapore, or down to Australia. Except East
-African coast lines, few steamers go around the Cape of Good Hope
-from England, excepting one line to South Australia, which steers
-straight eastward all the way from Cape Town to Adelaide, 6125 miles.
-But the Indian Ocean is so situated under the equator, is so filled
-with prevailing winds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span> and currents and counter currents, that
-sailing-vessels must take very roundabout courses there, and can by no
-means steer the same track at all seasons of the year. These voyages
-from New York and London to the East are the longest regular sea-roads.
-A short table of distances between well-known ports along regular
-steamer-routes will be of interest; and by reversing them, or adding
-them together, the sailing distance between almost any two ports on the
-globe may be calculated.</p>
-
-<div class="center">
-<table class="my90" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="distance between ports">
-<tr>
-<th>&nbsp;</th>
-<th class="tdr normal smaller">MILES.</th>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Acapulco to San Francisco</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,850</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Aden to Bombay</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,635</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Aden to Colombo (Ceylon)</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">2,100</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Aden to Zanzibar</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,770</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Auckland to Honolulu</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,915</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Auckland to Suva (Fiji)</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,140</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Cadiz to Teneriffe (Canaries)</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">698</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">2,350</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Cape Town to Plymouth (Eng.)</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">6,016</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Cork to St. John’s (N. F.)</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,730</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Ceylon to West Australia</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,305</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Glasgow to New York</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">2,790</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Havre to Martinique</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,560</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Havre to New York</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,160</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Hobart (Tas.) to Invercargill (N. Z.)</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">930</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Hong Kong to Manila</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">650</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Hong Kong to Shanghai</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">800</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Hong Kong to Yokohama</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,620</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Leith (Scot.) to Iceland</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,050</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Lisbon via Dakar (W. Af.) to Pernambuco</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,297</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Lisbon to Cape Verd Islands</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,537</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Liverpool to Barbadoes</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,646</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Lisbon to Para</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">4,000</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Liverpool to Lisbon</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">983</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Liverpool to Madeira</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,430</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Liverpool to New Orleans</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">4,767</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Liverpool to New York</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,057</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Liverpool to Para</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">4,010</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Liverpool to Quebec</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">2,634</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Marseilles to Algiers</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">410</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Montevideo to Magellan Strait</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,070</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">New Orleans to Havana</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">570</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">New York to Colon</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,980</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">New York to San Francisco, about</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">17,000</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">New York, via St. Thomas, to Para</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,130</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Panama to San Francisco</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,260</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Porto Rico (San Juan) to Havana</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,030</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Rio de Janeiro to Plymouth</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">4,941</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">San Francisco to Honolulu</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">2,080</td>
-</tr>
-<tr><td class="tdl"><p class="indent">San Francisco to Yokohama</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">5,280</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Shanghai to Yokohama</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,033</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Singapore to Hong Kong</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,430</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Suez to Aden (length of Red Sea)</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,308</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Suva to Honolulu</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">2,783</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Sydney to Auckland</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">1,281</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Sydney to Vancouver (B. C.)</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">6,780</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Teneriffe to Porto Rico</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">2,790</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Trieste to Bombay</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">4,317</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Yokohama to Honolulu</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">3,445</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Yokohama to San Francisco</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">4,750</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Yokohama to Victoria</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">4,320</td>
-</tr>
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl"><p class="indent">Zanzibar to Bombay</p></td>
-<td class="tdr">2,400</td>
-</tr></table></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_170">
-<img src="images/i_170.jpg" width="600" height="189" alt="chapter end decoration showing 3 ships" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">ROBBERS OF THE SEAS</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_171.jpg" width="75" height="73" alt="ornate capital A" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">As</span> the sea has furnished opportunities for so much good,—for manly
-exertion, knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with people outside
-of one’s own country, and for gaining wealth,—so it has given a chance
-for unscrupulous men to show the worst that is in them; and the
-guarding of shore towns and merchant vessels from piratical attacks has
-always been a part of the usefulness and duty of a nation’s naval force.</p>
-
-<p>As on land there are robbers and highwaymen, so on the ocean robber
-ships have often been lying in wait for vessels loaded with treasure,
-and have landed crews of marauders to make havoc with rich seaboard
-provinces. Such robbers on the high seas are termed pirates, and their
-crime was visited by the old laws with torturing punishments; yet they
-were never more daring than when the laws against them were severest.</p>
-
-<p>The word is Greek, and the first pirates who figure in history are
-those of the Greek and Byzantine islands and coasts—bloody ruffians
-who originated the amusing method of disposing of unransomed prisoners
-by making them “walk the plank,” as has been done within the present
-century.</p>
-
-<p>The intricate channels and hidden harbors of the &AElig;gean Sea long
-remained a hiding-place of sea-robbers, and are still haunted by
-them, though every few years, from C&aelig;sar’s time till now, the kings
-of the surrounding countries have sent expeditions to break them
-up. In the sixteenth century piracy in that region was especially
-prevalent. The crews then were chiefly Turkish, but the great leaders
-were two renegade Greeks, the brothers Aruck and Hayradin Barbarossa
-(“Redbeard”).</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_172">
-<img src="images/i_172.jpg" width="441" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">WALKING THE PLANK.</p></div>
-
-<p>It happened that Spain, having conquered the Moors of Granada in 1492
-and pursued her victories across the straits, had gained control of
-Algeria (at that time a collection of small Mohammedan states), and
-held it until the death of King Ferdinand in 1516. Then the Algerians
-sent an embassy to Aruck (sometimes spelled Horuk, or Ouradjh)
-Barbarossa, requesting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span> him to aid them in driving out the Spaniards,
-and promising him a share in the spoils. He eagerly accepted this
-proposition, seeing a great deal more in it than the Algerians saw;
-and the moment the Spaniards had been beaten and expelled he murdered
-the prince he had come there to help, seized upon the city and port
-for himself, and made it the headquarters of that system of desperate
-piracy which became the dread of all Europe. These robbers of the sea
-called themselves <i>corsairs</i>, from an Italian word signifying “a race”;
-and they generally won, because they had the best<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span> and swiftest vessels
-of that time, such as feluccas, xebecs, and the like. The black flag
-which they flew was not blacker than their reputations, so that even
-yet to call a man as bad as a Barbary pirate is to mean that he could
-not be much worse if he tried. The Spanish colonies in America, a few
-years later, began sending home immense treasures dug in the silver-and
-gold-mines of Peru and Mexico, and extorted from the natives or stolen
-from the temples of those unhappy countries. A quantity of ingots and
-gold and silver ornaments equal in value to fifteen million dollars
-of our modern money was taken at one time by Pizarro, in Peru, as the
-ransom of the Inca Atahualpa, and booty amounting to a similar sum
-was gained in the sacking of various cities. This great inpouring of
-wealth caused a general giving up of manufactures and trade in Spain,
-and was one of the reasons of her final decline in power, and it had
-the immediate bad effect of making piracy more attractive than ever.
-The treasure-ships, though convoyed by war-ships, were often attacked
-and captured by the corsairs. Barbarossa’s fleets were more like
-armadas of a powerful nation than mere pirate craft; and whenever it
-happened that his commanders were defeated, they would land upon the
-nearest unprotected coast of Spain, France, or Italy, and pillage and
-burn some town in revenge. How galling this was to all merchants and
-travelers we can hardly understand in these days; but so strong were
-the corsairs that the fleets and armies of various governments, and
-even of the Pope, which were sent against them, could not gain their
-stronghold nor suppress their cruisers, at least for more than a short
-time. Charles V of Spain tried greatly to conquer them; but although
-his forces, attacking Aruck Barbarossa from the province of Oran, near
-Algiers, defeated and killed him, Hayradin (more properly spelled
-Khair-ed-din) Barbarossa succeeded his brother, and, placing himself
-under the protection of Turkey, continued to build up the power of
-the pirates. His first care was to fortify the city of Algiers, and
-he expended a great deal of money and labor on the perfection of the
-harbor, compelling all his prisoners and thousands of citizens to work
-as slaves on the defenses. Next he conquered Tunis, and was selected by
-the sultan as the only fit man to sail against Andrea Doria, the great
-Genoese naval commander of the Christians in their wars against the
-Turks early in the sixteenth century. Mediterranean commerce became so
-unsafe that watch-towers were built all along the coasts, and guards
-were kept afoot to give alarm at the approach of the corsairs. Charles
-V gathered together a powerful armament, and sailed to the rescue of
-Tunis, recapturing it for its rightful sovereign in 1535; but he was
-never able to capture Hayradin Barbarossa, who lived out his life in
-Algiers as “a friend to the sea and an enemy to all who sailed upon
-it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>.” After his time the power of the pirates continued under other
-leaders; and not Algeria alone, but Tripoli, Morocco, and even Tunis,
-harbored piratical vessels in every port, and the rulers shared their
-spoils; piracy, indeed, was the source of their national revenues, and
-was encouraged by the Sultan of Turkey inasmuch as all these states
-were his vassals.</p>
-
-<p>Every few years some European power—Spain, France, Venice, or
-England—would lose patience, send a fleet, and open a campaign that
-would be successful in destroying certain strongholds, releasing a
-crowd of prisoners, and burning or sinking many ships. The city of
-Algiers was bombarded almost into ruins in 1682, and the job completed
-a year later, after the Algerians had tossed the French consul out to
-the fleet, with their compliments, from the mouth of a mortar. They
-were fond of such jokes. Nevertheless, the city speedily recovered, and
-piracy, complicated by Moslem fanaticism and Turkish politics, harassed
-commerce during all the next century, partly because Europe was so busy
-in its own wars that it had no time for outside matters, and partly
-because it was for the advantage of certain nations (particularly
-of Great Britain, which, in possession of Gibraltar and Port Mahon,
-might have suppressed this villainy) to let the corsairs prey upon
-its foes—especially France. The actual result was that most or all of
-the European powers fell into the custom of paying to Algiers, Tunis,
-Tripoli, and other rulers of the Barbary (or Berber) States large sums
-of money as annual tribute to restrain them from official depredations
-upon their coasts and commerce, besides other large payments for the
-ransom of such Christian prisoners as each sultan’s lively subjects
-continued to take in spite of treaties.</p>
-
-<p>In this shameful condition of affairs the newly independent United
-States was obliged to join during the first years of its existence, to
-secure immunity for our commerce in the Mediterranean, because we had
-not yet had time to create a navy. By the end of the century, however,
-the United States was able to defend itself at sea, and in 1801
-answered the insults of Tripoli by bombarding its capital seaport until
-the dey sued for mercy and promised to behave himself. Nevertheless,
-he needed another lesson, and in 1803 a second American fleet was sent
-to the Mediterranean, commanded by Preble, in the <i>Constitution</i>,
-with such subordinate officers as Bainbridge, Decatur, Somers, Hull,
-Stewart, Lawrence, and others that later became famous. One incident
-of this campaign, which began by frightening the Sultan of Morocco at
-Tangier into abject submission, but was especially directed against
-Tripoli, is well worth remembering.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_175">
-<img src="images/i_175.jpg" width="600" height="579" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE “ARGUS” CAPTURING A TRIPOLITAN PIRATE FELUCCA.</p></div>
-
-<p>Captain Bainbridge, going alone in the fine frigate <i>Philadelphia</i> into
-the harbor of the city of Tripoli, had unfortunately run aground, and
-there,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span> overpowered by the number of his enemies afloat and ashore,
-had been compelled to give up his ship, and find himself and all his
-crew taken prisoners. He managed to get word of his misfortune to
-Commodore Preble at Malta, and that officer at once took his fleet to
-Tripoli—Decatur, in the <i>Argus</i>, gallantly capturing on the way one
-of the great lateen-sailed piratical crafts of the enemy, which later
-proved a useful instrument in the contest. The fleet blockaded Tripoli
-for a while, and shelled the fortifications somewhat, just to give the
-bashaw a hint, and to encourage the poor prisoners; but none of the big
-vessels was able to enter the narrow, tortuous, and ill-charted harbor
-in the face of the many batteries, under whose guns the <i>Philadelphia</i>
-could be seen at anchor with the Tripolitan flag at her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span> main, so they
-sailed away to Syracuse to make preparations for reducing this nest of
-barbarians. Gunboats of light draft and mortar-vessels had to be fitted
-out; but the first thing was to try to carry out a plan that Decatur
-and all his friends had been maturing ever since they had arrived—the
-destruction of the <i>Philadelphia</i>, not only because she had been
-refitted into a powerful weapon in the hands of the enemy, but because
-it was galling to national as well as naval pride to see her flying a
-foreign flag. The plan was this:</p>
-
-<p>Decatur was to take a picked crew of seventy officers and men on
-the captured felucca (renamed <i>Intrepid</i>), and attempt at night to
-penetrate to the inner harbor of Tripoli in the disguise of a trader,
-supported as well as possible by the gun-brig <i>Siren</i>, also disguised
-as a merchantman. As his pilot was an Italian and a competent linguist,
-it was hoped the ketch could get near enough to set fire to the ship,
-whirl a shotted deck-gun into position to send a shell down the main
-hatch and through her bottom, fire it, and escape before the surprise
-was over. The chances of failure were enough to daunt the bravest, yet
-every man in the fleet wanted to go.</p>
-
-<p>On February 15, 1804, Decatur in his felucca, and Somers commanding the
-brig, found themselves, toward evening, again in sight of the town,
-with its circle of forts crowned by the frowning castle. The great
-<i>Philadelphia</i> stood out in bold relief, closely surrounded by two
-frigates and more than twenty gunboats and galleys. From the castle and
-batteries 115 guns could be trained upon an attacking force, besides
-the fire of the vessels, yet the bold tars on the <i>Intrepid</i> did not
-quail.</p>
-
-<p>The crew having been sent below, the pilot Catalona took the wheel,
-while Decatur stood beside him, disguised as a common sailor. It
-was now nine o’clock, and bright moonlight. Standing steadily in,
-they rounded to close by the <i>Philadelphia</i>, and, boldly hailing her
-deck-watch, asked the privilege of mooring to her chains for the night,
-explaining that they had lost their anchors in the late storm, and so
-forth, until at last consent was given.</p>
-
-<p>Having dragged themselves close to the frigate, it was the work of only
-a moment to board her with a rush, overpower her surprised crew, and
-make sure of her destruction by means of the combustibles and powder
-they had brought with them. Before their task was done, however, they
-had been discovered, and it is almost a miracle that they were able to
-return to their felucca, and make their way out of the harbor, through
-a rain of harmless cannon-balls; yet they did so, and Decatur was
-justly honored for one of the most gallant exploits in naval annals.</p>
-
-<p>A few weeks later Preble’s squadron shelled the pirate city and
-fortresses into ruin, forced Tripoli as well as Algiers and Tunis
-to respect them and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span> thenceforth the American flag, and gave these
-arrogant rulers the new sensation of paying instead of receiving money
-for bad deeds. It put an end to the corsairs.</p>
-
-<p>Turkish and Barbary pirates were not the only ones in the world,
-however. Although the old Norwegian vikings and rough Norman barons did
-not go under that name, they were scarcely anything else, in fact, as
-the neighboring peoples could testify, though this was far back before
-modern history began. But when the Spaniards and the French began
-to colonize the West Indies, and to dig mines in South and Central
-America, not only were the Barbary corsairs given a fresh incentive,
-but a new set of pirates sprang up, the most daring that the world has
-ever seen.</p>
-
-<p>As the archipelago east of Greece had sheltered the hordes of the
-Turkish sea-robbers, so the many islands, crooked channels, reefs
-unknown to all but the local pilots, small harbors, and abundant food
-of the Antilles, made the West Indies the safest place in the world
-for pirates to pursue their work. To these new and wild regions, in
-the sixteenth century, had flocked desperados and adventurers from all
-over the world. When the wars with their chances of plunder died out
-after the campaigns led by Cort&eacute;s, Pizarro, Balboa, and the rest of the
-Spanish <i>conquistadores</i>, many ruffians seized upon vessels by force,
-or stole them, and turned into robbers of the sea. At first, as a
-rule, they had farms and families on some island, and went freebooting
-only a portion of the year. The island of Hayti, or Santo Domingo,
-was then settled by farmers, hunters, and cattlemen, the last-named
-of whom, mainly French, passed most of their time in the interior of
-the island, capturing, herding, or killing half-wild cattle and hogs.
-But the monopolies which Spain imposed upon the colonists interfered
-with the market for their produce and induced an illicit trade, which
-led to frequent encounters with the Spanish navy. As the constant wars
-between Spain and France and England increased the difficulties of
-trade, large numbers of the colonists joined the freebooters, who then
-became extremely numerous and formidable, losing their old name and
-becoming known by that of the cattlemen—buccaneers, from the French
-word <i>boucanier</i>.</p>
-
-<p>First Santo Domingo, then Tortugas, and finally Jamaica were
-headquarters of the buccaneers, who were made up of men of all nations,
-united by a desire to prey upon Spain as a common enemy. They were
-thousands in number, possessed large fleets of ships and boats, were
-well armed, and finally formed a regular organization with a chief and
-under-officers. The most noted of these chiefs, perhaps, was Henry
-Morgan, a Welshman, who was at one time captured and taken home to
-England for trial. To his own surprise, instead of being executed,
-he was knighted by Charles II,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span> who had not been at all grieved at
-seeing Spanish commerce harassed; and Morgan was returned to Jamaica
-as commissioner of admiralty, where at one time he acted as deputy
-governor, using his opportunity to make it unpleasant for those of
-the buccaneers with whom he had formerly had disagreements as to the
-distribution of prizes.</p>
-
-<p>The earlier buccaneers found ample plunder in the Spanish fleets. They
-patrolled the sea in the track of vessels bound to and from Europe, and
-seized them, allowing or compelling the crews to become pirates, or
-else to be killed or carried into slavery. This work, however, employed
-only a portion of the buccaneers; and early in the seventeenth century,
-as the commerce of Spain declined, it became too uncertain a means of
-wealth to suit them. But the rich Spanish settlements still remained;
-and often, therefore, they equipped a great fleet, enlisted men under
-certain strict rules as to sharing the spoils, and sailed away to
-pillage some coast. There was hardly an island in the West Indies from
-which, in this way, they did not extort immense sums of money under
-threat of destruction of the people. The mainland also suffered from
-the marauders. Great cities, like Cartagena in Venezuela, Panama on
-the Isthmus, M&eacute;rida in Yucatan, and Havana in Cuba, were attacked
-by armies of buccaneers numbering thousands of men. Sometimes their
-fortifications held good, and the enemy was beaten back; but sooner or
-later all these cities, and others, smaller, were captured, robbed of
-everything valuable that they contained, and burned or partly burned.</p>
-
-<p>For years the buccaneers were the terror of the Caribbean region, and
-after the famous sacking of Panama, under Morgan, in 1671, their power
-spread across the Isthmus and scourged the southern seas. We have no
-way of knowing the amount of the treasure which they captured from the
-merchant vessels and from the coast of Peru; for the moment they got
-home from an expedition they wasted all their booty in wild carousing,
-so that the spoils earned by months of exposure, and wounds, and danger
-of death, would be spent in a single week.</p>
-
-<p>At last even England and France, after secretly favoring the
-buccaneers, became roused to the necessity of controlling them, and
-it was with this object in view that a certain Captain William Kidd
-was fitted out at private expense toward the end of the seventeenth
-century, and armed with King William’s commission for seizing pirates
-and making reprisals, England being at war with France. Just why it
-was, nobody has explained, but Captain Kidd spent his time in loitering
-around the coast of Africa, where no pirates were to be found, until he
-grew quite disheartened, and, fearing to be dismissed by his employers
-and to be “mark’d out for an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span> unlucky man,” he started a little pirate
-business for himself, in which he gained more of a certain kind of
-fame than any of the rest; for popular tradition supposes him to have
-hoarded his booty and buried it. “Captain Kidd’s treasure” has been
-sought for until the whole eastern coast of the United States is
-honeycombed with diggings for it; but probably he had eaten and drunk
-it up before 1701, when he was captured and executed in England. About
-this time, however, and without his valuable aid, the combined naval
-forces of all the nations interested in the commerce of the New World
-broke the power of the buccaneers, and their depredations ceased. Their
-story is one of the wildest, most romantic, and most terrible in the
-history of the world.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_179">
-<img src="images/i_179.jpg" width="400" height="308" alt="" />
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
-<div class="stanza">
-<div class="line">“In revel and carousing</div>
-<div class="line">We gave the New Year housing,</div>
-<div class="line">With wreckage for our firing,</div>
-<div class="line">And rum to heart’s desiring.”</div>
-</div></div></div>
-</div>
-
-<p>The trade of piracy was carried on during the eighteenth century in the
-region of the West Indies by unorganized bands of desperados who had
-all the faults and none of the greatness of the men they succeeded, and
-who received little attention from the world at large. At the beginning
-of the nineteenth century the Barataria pirates came into notice on
-the coast of Louisiana, taking the place of the buccaneers, but in a
-much smaller way. Their leaders, Pierre and John Lafitte, carried on
-business quite openly in New Orleans; and their settlements on the
-marshy islands along the coast,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span> and their “temple,” to which persons
-came out from the city to buy goods, were open secrets. But in the
-War of 1812, although the British tried to buy their services, they
-redeemed themselves by standing true to the American government, which
-had just been trying to exterminate them, and so they won public pardon
-and an added glamour of romance.</p>
-
-<p>For the same reasons as those in the case of other island systems, the
-East Indies have always been infested with pirates, whose light, swift
-vessels run in and out of the intricate channels among the dangerous
-coral reefs, where government cruisers dare not follow, while the
-people on shore sympathize more with the pirates than with the police.</p>
-
-<p>The East Indian sea-robbers are, as a rule, natives of that
-region—Malays, Borneans, Dyaks, and Chinese, with many half-savages
-of the South Sea Islands. This is more like a continuance of savage
-resistance to civilization than real piracy, since the pirates of the
-Atlantic are civilized sailors in mutiny against their own people
-and national commerce. The result is just as bad, however; for these
-East Indians are as bloodthirsty and cruel as the others, and if they
-do not kill their victims, or save them for some cannibal feast (as
-would probably happen in the New Hebrides and some other islands),
-they condemn them to a life of misery. But in these days of improved
-sea-craft, piracy, even in Malayan waters, is weak. Our consuls and
-government agents watch suspicious vessels; our telegraph warns the
-naval authorities in a moment; our steam-cruisers outspeed the swiftest
-craft of the black flag; our rifled guns silence their cheap artillery;
-and our coast surveys furnish maps so accurate that the pirate no
-longer holds the secret of channels and harbors where he can safely
-retreat. If, therefore, the old “Redbeards” should come back to life
-and try to be kings of the sea, as they rejoiced to be a couple of
-centuries ago, their pride would soon be humbled, and they would gladly
-return to their graves and their ancient glory.</p>
-
-<p>There is a form of sea-roving which has been at times not very
-different from piracy; it is called <i>privateering</i>, and history shows
-a good many cases where it has degenerated into sea-robbery pure and
-simple.</p>
-
-<p>A privateer is a ship, owned by a private citizen or citizens, to which
-authority is given by a government to act as an independent war-vessel.
-Its commission is called a “letter of marque” (<i>lettre de marque</i> in
-French), entitling it to “take, burn, and destroy” a certain enemy’s
-property on the sea or in its ports. It has no right, of course, to
-attack any one else.</p>
-
-<p>The object and plea of the government issuing commissions to privateers
-is that thus a great many more armed vessels can be sent afloat
-than the government has money to equip, and that consequently far
-more damage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span> will be done to the enemy, by crippling his trade and
-resources, than regular men-of-war alone can accomplish. Private
-capital has been willing to take the risk because rewarded by a large
-share of the prizes; and from the end of the fifteenth to the middle of
-the eighteenth century this was one of the most profitable of marine
-industries, for then nearly universal wars made almost any capture
-legitimate. In the earlier times even the limited regulation that came
-later was absent, and there was small choice between a privateer and
-a pirate. Queen Elizabeth found the hundreds of privateers which she
-had commissioned against the Spanish and Dutch preying upon her own
-people, and robbing fishermen, coasters, and small shore towns, to such
-an extent that she had to suppress them as bandits. Those were the
-times when Hawkins could use a royal fleet to wage war upon the Spanish
-colonies for private reasons; and when his ablest lieutenant, Drake,
-could make his notable journey around the world a history of robbery
-and slaughter. On the west coast of South America he spent months in
-destroying Spanish vessels and ravaging and burning settlements; yet
-it was thought remarkable, when he returned from his circumnavigation
-of the globe, that the Queen hesitated somewhat before recognizing his
-great achievements as a seaman, for fear of complications with Spain!</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_181">
-<img src="images/i_181.jpg" width="600" height="371" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">MALAY PIRATES ATTACKING A STEAMER.</p></div>
-
-<p>Spain, in those days of first harvest from her American possessions
-and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span> the East Indies, was the prey of everybody on the high seas able
-to rob her, and formalities were joyously disregarded by both sides.
-Her galleons carried precious cargoes of spices, silks, and East India
-goods around the Cape, and brought silver ingots and gold bars from the
-Spanish Main. They were usually convoyed by regular war-ships, and had
-to run the gantlet of the enemy’s fleets whenever Spain happened to be
-openly at war with somebody, as was usually the case; and otherwise
-must escape buccaneers in West Indian waters, Malayan and Chinese
-pirates in the far East, and irregular sea-rovers along the West
-African coast, while the corsairs made the Mediterranean route doubly
-dangerous.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_182">
-<img src="images/i_182.jpg" width="600" height="479" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">PAUL JONES’ FIGHT IN THE “BON HOMME RICHARD” WITH THE
-“SERAPIS.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The gradual growth of organized navies, the development of
-international law, and the increasing organization of the civilized
-world generally, slowly tamed these wild practices and reduced
-privateering to some sort of control. Thus Jean Bart, the popular
-hero of French naval history, who flourished toward the end of the
-seventeenth century, was recognized and supported by the French monarch
-as a free-lance in the Mediterranean,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span> because his humble birth
-prohibited him from taking a commission in the regular navy, which
-amounted to a sort of apology for his deeds.</p>
-
-<p>During the wars of the United States with England privateering was
-extensively practised on both sides, and was of especial value to the
-Americans. Congress issued private commissions as early as March,
-1776, and the ablest statesmen upheld it as a means of employing the
-ships, capital, and thousands of seamen that must lie idle when the
-enemy’s cruisers were ranging the ocean highways unless permitted to
-arm themselves and assist the government in an irregular warfare,
-trusting to the value of their captures for remuneration. That the
-chance of such reward was enough inducement is shown by the fact that
-during the first year of the Revolution nearly three hundred and fifty
-British vessels were captured, chiefly West Indiamen, worth, with their
-cargoes, five million dollars. As Great Britain did not recognize
-the flag of the United States, not only these, but even our regular
-naval officers, were regarded by them as pirates, rather than true
-privateers—Paul Jones first of all; but she never acted on this theory
-with the severity that would have been visited upon true pirates.</p>
-
-<p>In the naval warfare that came later between the United States and
-France, privateering again flourished, and was a source of immense
-profit to the principal seaports whence these swift, effective Yankee
-vessels were despatched. No less than three hundred and sixty-five
-American privateers were sent out between 1789 and 1799, and swept the
-seas almost clean of the French merchant flag.</p>
-
-<p>Then came the second war with Great Britain, which was fought over
-a question of the sea rather than of the land,—the right of search
-claimed by the British,—and once more American and British privateers
-swarmed upon the highways of commerce. Of our merchant ships in all
-parts of the world, about five hundred were lost; but this was more
-than paid for, since our two hundred and fifty privateers captured or
-destroyed, during the three years and nine months of the conflict, no
-less than sixteen hundred British merchant vessels of all classes.</p>
-
-<p>This disparity of results was largely due to the greater number of
-English merchant vessels, but is also to be credited to the superior
-speed and handiness of the Yankee vessels, most of which were
-“Baltimore clippers,” topsail-rigged schooners with raking masts, that
-could outsail and out-manœuver anything afloat. “They usually carried
-from six to ten guns, with a single long one, which was called ‘Long
-Tom,’ mounted on a swivel in the center. They were usually manned with
-fifty persons besides officers, all armed with muskets, cutlasses, and
-boarding-pikes.”</p>
-
-<p>An English writer, Mr. R. C. Leslie, is of the opinion that this type
-of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span> vessel grew out of models in vogue in the West Indies, long before,
-for the small piratical craft that made those waters the terror of
-travelers.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_184">
-<img src="images/i_184.jpg" width="600" height="396" alt="" />
-<p class="caption"><span class="smallest">DRAWN BY W. TABER.</span><span class="smallest add4em">ENGRAVED BY HENRY WOLF.</span><br />
-UNITED STATES FRIGATE “CONSTELLATION” OVERHAULING THE SLAVER “CORA.”</p></div>
-
-<p>These Baltimore clippers, too, enlarged and square-rigged, but still
-the fastest things on the western ocean, formed the craft with which
-the slave-trade was continued between Africa and America long after
-it had been condemned by the civilized world. For many years previous
-to the American Civil War, which put an end to the larger part of the
-traffic by destroying its market, England and the United States kept
-squadrons patrolling the African coast to arrest the slavers and free
-their “cargoes.”</p>
-
-<p>What wild, wild tales of the sea do these reminiscences of piracy,
-privateering, and the slave-chase bring to mind—tales of horror, and
-yet full of such deeds of daring and romance and fierce delight as must
-stir the heart in spite of brain and conscience!</p>
-
-<p>Pirates are things of the past—no more to be feared except in a small
-way in the Malayan and Chinese archipelagoes. The African slave-trade
-is extinct, so far as shipment across the ocean is concerned, save
-where, now and then, an Arab dhow steals with its black cargo along
-the East African foreland, or flits across the Gulf of Aden or the Red
-Sea. Privateering has been forbidden by international treaty among the
-larger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span> European powers, which now recognize that trade goods, even
-of belligerents, must be held safe in the ships of neutrals (except
-articles declared contraband of war), because the business of the
-world cannot stop, or even be put in jeopardy, by a quarrel between
-two nations. Privateering, therefore, has been abandoned in Europe
-as a method of war since the treaty of Paris in 1856, though Prussia
-came pretty near it in 1870, by organizing what she called a volunteer
-fleet, and Spain reserves the privilege of commissioning privateers.</p>
-
-<p>The United States, however, and some other countries whose policy
-or ability forbid them to have a large navy, would not enter into
-the European agreement above mentioned, mutually to abstain from
-privateering, on the plea that to do so would be to yield the most
-powerful weapon of a nation weak in naval armament and sea commerce,
-against any of many possible enemies whose large sea-borne commerce
-would expose it to the most serious wounds. In our Civil War the
-President issued no letters of marque, although authorized to do so.
-It was customary to speak of the Confederate cruisers <i>Alabama</i>,
-<i>Shenandoah</i>, <i>Florida</i>, etc., as privateers, or even pirates, and
-they actually played the part with a success woeful to us of the
-North, and to Great Britain, which had to pay for the damages caused
-by the <i>Alabama</i>; but, strictly speaking, they were neither, because
-commissioned by a temporary but regular government, whose flag might
-have been recognized if its arms had succeeded.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_185">
-<img src="images/i_185.jpg" width="500" height="258" alt="cannon" />
-</div>
-
-<p>More lately (1898) the United States has announced it as its policy to
-refrain from privateering, though no formal signature has been given to
-any international agreement to that effect.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_186">
-<img src="images/i_186.jpg" width="600" height="349" alt="" />
-<p class="caption"><span class="smallest">STEAM YACHT.</span><span class="smallest add3em">“HALCYON.”</span><span class="smallest add3em">SANDY HOOK LIGHT-SHIP.</span><span class="smallest add3em">“VOLUNTEER.”</span><span class="smallest add3em">“MAYFLOWER.”</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">A SPIN OUT TO SEA.—WELL-KNOWN YACHTS ROUNDING THE SANDY HOOK LIGHT-SHIP.</p>
-
-<p class="caption"><span class="smallest">(From the painting by J. O. Davidson, owned by F. A. Hammond, Esq.)</span></p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">YACHTING AND PLEASURE-BOATING</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_187.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="ornate capital Y" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">Yacht</span> is a word derived from the Dutch language, which has given to
-the English so many of its sea-terms, meaning, originally, a fast
-boat, such as was built for chasing pirates and smugglers, and, later,
-a pleasure-boat. The latter meaning alone is now kept in view by the
-word, which is properly applied to anything designed and used for
-pleasure-sailing, whether moved by sails, steam, or electricity.</p>
-
-<p>In Great Britain, where yachting, as we now understand it, arose, it
-was not until about 1650 that races between pleasure craft began to
-be sailed on the Thames and in the quiet waters about the Isle of
-Wight, while the first yacht-club was not formed until 1720 (at Cork,
-in Ireland). Even then, a century elapsed before yachting as a sport
-attracted much attention even among the British, famous for their love
-of the sea. In 1812 a “yacht-club” was founded at Cowes, in the Isle
-of Wight. It received a new impetus and became the “Royal Yacht-Club”
-in 1817, the Prince Regent having joined it, and in 1833 was again
-reorganized by King William III as the “Royal Yacht Squadron,” the
-designation it bears to-day. It carried on races, or regattas, as they
-soon came to be called (borrowing from the Italians a term descriptive
-of the old Venetian gondola races), but all sorts of cruising-boats
-were matched against one another, classified by a tonnage rule with no
-allowances for size or any of the systems by which contestants are now
-classified and equalized.</p>
-
-<p>By this time, however, there was peace on the North Atlantic, and many
-a good seaman was free to turn his attention to enjoying and improving
-the tools of his profession. By this time, also, the Americans had made
-great headway as ship-builders and seamen, and by rivalry with the
-Old World for trade, and by experience in the Newfoundland fisheries
-and the West Indies fruit-trade, had acquired a skill in building and
-rigging ships that astonished the world by their speed and weatherly
-qualities. It was natural<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span> that these ideas should influence pleasure
-craft on this side of the water, as Great Britain’s long sea-struggles
-had influenced its sailors; and when, in 1844, the New York Yacht-Club
-was founded, the conditions were favorable for beginning that home
-development of yachting as a sport which was soon to place the
-Americans and Canadians among the leading yachting peoples of the
-world, and to lead to those international tests of speed that nowadays
-excite so wide-spread and intense an interest.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_188">
-<img src="images/i_188.jpg" width="600" height="409" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">“AMERICA” (AS ORIGINALLY RIGGED) AND “MARIA.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The great preponderance in numbers and value of pleasure-vessels in
-the United States, and in the number of clubs and club-members, is due
-not only to our large population and long coast-line, but to the great
-extent of inland waters furnished by our rivers and interior lakes, and
-to the prevalence of bays or protected lagoons, such as Narragansett
-Bay, the Great South Bay of Long Island, New York harbor, Delaware
-and Chesapeake bays, and the long series of “sounds” that border the
-southern Atlantic coast from Barnegat to Biscayne. The Great Lakes are
-bordered by yacht-clubs on both sides, and furnish space and weather
-for quite as serious work as tries the skill of ocean navigators,
-while a hundred smaller lakes make fine pleasure-waters and excellent
-training-grounds for fresh-water sailors.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Though the first regatta in America was sailed in 1845, little over
-half a century ago, the evolution of American yachts began with the
-building of the sloop <i>Maria</i> by Robert L. Stevens, one of that family
-of remarkable inventors, who had already devised the first practical
-screw-steamer, and afterward created the <i>Monitor</i>. Her model, as we
-learn from an excellent article in “The Century” for July, 1882, by S.
-G. W. Benjamin, was suggested by the low, broad, almost flat-bottomed
-sloops employed to steal over the shallows of the Hudson and the
-Sound—vessels depending upon beam rather than on ballast for stability,
-and imitated by many of our coasters, which are so stiff that they
-sometimes make outside voyages without either cargo or ballast; but
-the <i>Maria</i> had a long, sharp, hollowed bow, whence she expanded aft,
-with little taper at the stern, so that her deck-plan was that of an
-elongated flat-iron. The principal novelty about her, however, was the
-use of two “center-boards.”</p>
-
-<p>A center-board is a plate of wood or metal, suspended, usually by a
-corner pivot, within a sheath or box in the waist, which can be let
-down through the keel into the water, so as to form an adjustable keel.
-It is the most convenient form of a very old device for preventing a
-boat’s drift to leeward, or tendency to capsize under the pressure of
-the wind. In earliest times, a mat was hung over the side. Later this
-was replaced by the leeboard, apparently a Dutch invention, which may
-still be seen on the canal barges in Holland, and which was a feature
-of the pirogues or periaugers (shallow double-ended sailing-canoes)
-that in early times formed almost the only type of small sail-boat in
-New York waters. Two other novel, foreshadowing features possessed by
-Mr. Stevens’ boat, were the use of rubber compressors on the traveler
-of the main boom to ease the strain of the sheet (rubber is applied in
-many places about modern rigging), and the bolting of lead to the keel
-as outside ballast.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Maria</i> justified the expectations aroused by these and other
-novelties in hull and rig by beating everything in existence, until
-a Swedish gentleman in New York constructed a much smaller boat, the
-<i>Coquette</i>, on very different lines, for although only sixty-six feet
-long she drew ten feet of water; and in a match on the open sea she
-beat the <i>Maria</i> easily, showing the superiority of the deep-keeled
-model for windy weather.</p>
-
-<p>Profiting by these experiences and widely gathered information, a new
-designer essayed the task of making a still better yacht. This was
-George Steers, the son of a British naval captain and ship-modeler,
-who had become an American naval officer and was the first man to
-take charge of the Washington navy yard. He built several graceful
-and fleet-winged sloops, famous in their day, such as the <i>Julia</i>,
-David Carl’s <i>Gracie</i>, and many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span> pilot-boats and ships. His most
-celebrated production, however, and the one which gave our yachtsmen
-an international reputation and established their method of pursuing
-recreation as the foremost American sport, was the <i>America</i>, from
-which the “America Cup” races take origin and name.</p>
-
-<p>The origin was really accidental. When the first World’s Fair was to be
-held at the Crystal Palace in London, one of the attendant festivities
-was a great national gathering of British yachts in their favorite
-harbor, Cowes, at which, it was announced, foreign yachtsmen were to be
-welcome, especially Americans. In preparation for it, John C. Stevens,
-of Hoboken, then Commodore of the New York Yacht-Club, and some of his
-friends, ordered a new yacht from George Steers with which to cross
-the Atlantic and meet the English racers. This new boat, completed in
-the spring of 1851, and named <i>America</i>, was schooner-rigged, but had
-raking masts, no topsails except a small main gaff, and only one jib,
-whose foot was laced to a boom. Such was the style of the day; but
-later she was changed in rig so as to carry far more and bigger sails,
-more like those of a modern schooner-yacht.</p>
-
-<p>The moment she arrived in Cowes, in the early summer of 1851, her
-superiority in speed was conceded, and no British captain would consent
-to meet her; but finally a match was extemporized, open to all nations,
-for which a prize was offered in the form of a cup presented by the
-Royal Yacht Squadron—not by the Queen, as usually said. Fifteen yachts
-responded, but none showed what it could do, for there was little wind,
-and the cup was awarded to the <i>America</i> more in general acknowledgment
-of its excellence than because of any great performance there. Not
-much importance was attached to the incident, but the silver tankard
-was brought home and left to ornament Commodore Stevens’ drawing-room
-until 1857, when its owners dedicated it to the purpose of a perpetual
-challenge cup, in charge of the New York Yacht-Club, for international
-races under specified conditions. Fifteen years elapsed, however,
-before the first contestant appeared.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>America</i> had differed prominently in shape from all her opponents
-at Cowes, by having fine hollowed bows and a wide stern, instead of
-the bluff bows and narrowing after part—the “cod’s head and mackerel’s
-tail” pattern—of English craft; she also had sails that hung very flat
-instead of bellying out under the wind as was the foreign style. In
-these directions British yachtsmen saw good, and tried to improve; but
-they would have nothing to do with center-boards, and clung to their
-cutter-rig. We, on the other hand, had gained ideas as to improving
-rig, especially in the schooners, and in the bestowal of ballast,
-outside and in.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_191">
-<img src="images/i_191.jpg" width="600" height="476" alt="" />
-<p><span class="smallest">FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY G. WEST &amp; SON, SOUTHSEA, ENGLAND.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">“GENESTA,” “TARA,” AND “IREX”—THE BRITISH TYPE OF CUTTER OF 1884-85.</p>
-
-<p class="caption"><span class="smallest">“Galatea,” 1885, belonged to the same type.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>At length, in 1870, an English schooner, the <i>Cambria</i>, came over to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
-compete for the cup, and was pitted against a fleet of crack yachts
-off Sandy Hook; but again the wind was so light that the boats did
-little more than drift. The Englishman, nevertheless, was outdrifted
-by nine others, and the leader was the little sloop <i>Magic</i>, which
-became the custodian of the cup. The next year, however, another
-challenge was received, and the British keel-yacht <i>Livonia</i> appeared
-and was defeated by the American keel-schooner <i>Sappho</i>, which, under
-a new rule, had won her right to defend the cup by first beating
-in preparatory ocean races all other rivals for the honor. As this
-contest was between single representative yachts, tried in five races,
-and in all sorts of weather, it was a fair and conclusive measure of
-comparative qualities. The next yacht to come after the international
-cup was the Canadian <i>Countess of Dufferin</i>, which was promptly
-defeated by the <i>Magic</i> in 1876. Five years later another Canadian
-appeared, the <i>Atalanta</i>, differing from previous contestants in being
-a single-masted center-board<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span> yacht; but her rigging and finish were
-so bad that her excellent model could not save her from defeat (1881)
-at the hands of the elegant iron sloop <i>Mischief</i> which had been built
-especially for the race, and had won her foremost place through severe
-trial races, as before.</p>
-
-<p>Up to this time, as Mr. W. P. Stephens tells us in “The Century”
-for August, 1893, whence many of the portraits of these racers have
-been taken, no pleasure-boats had been built except after the rule
-of thumb—some practical sailor whittled out a model according to his
-ideas, and the builder followed it.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Systematic designing was unknown, and ... one type of yacht was in
-general use, the wide, shoal center-board craft, with high trunk
-cabin, large open cockpit, ballast all inside (and of iron, or even
-slag and stone), and a heavy and clumsy wooden construction. Faulty
-in every way as this type has since been proved, in the absence of
-any different standard it was considered perfect, and open doubts
-were expressed of the patriotism if not the sanity of the few
-American yachtsmen who, about 1877, called into question the merits
-of the American center-board sloop, and pointed out the opposing
-qualities of the British cutter—her non-capsizability, due to the
-use of lead ballast outside of the hull; her speed in rough water;
-and the superiority of her rig both in proportions and in mechanical
-details.</p>
-
-<p>A wordy warfare over these types raged for several years, gaining
-strength with the building of the first true English cutter, the
-<i>Muriel</i>, in New York in 1878, and bearing good fruit a year later
-in the launching of the <i>Mischief</i>, an American center-board sloop,
-but modified in accordance with the new theories. The plumb stem, the
-straight sheer, and higher free-board, with quite a shapely though
-short overhang, suggested the hull of the cutter, and though quite
-wide—nearly twenty feet on sixty-one feet water-line—she drew nearly
-six feet. Even with her sloop rig she was a marked departure from
-the older boats of her class, especially as she was built of iron in
-place of wood, and consequently carried her ballast, all lead, at a
-very low point.</p></div>
-
-<p>One of the results of this controversy was the sending to this country,
-from Scotland, of a little ten-ton racing cutter, the <i>Madge</i>, purely
-to show what capabilities lay in “a deep, narrow, lead-keeled craft
-with the typical cutter rig.” The only American able to beat her was
-the <i>Shadow</i>, a famous Herreshoff sloop of unusual depth, and she did
-it but once. Nevertheless, the controversy was not decided in the
-United States, and the Britishers thought it worth while to try to
-give us another lesson. In 1884 they launched two big cutters, <i>Irex</i>
-and <i>Genesta</i>, and in 1885 a third, <i>Galatea</i>; and Sir Richard Sutton,
-owner of <i>Genesta</i>, and Lieutenant William Henn, R. N., owner of
-<i>Galatea</i>, challenged for the America Cup.</p>
-
-<p>Then the question arose: What should be done to meet them? The British
-cutters differed from those previously met, in that they were built
-for racing, not for general use—were “racing machines” instead of
-cruising-yachts. To meet this, a scientific designer of marine vessels,
-Mr. A. Cary Smith of New York, was called upon to produce a moderately
-deep, center-board,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span> iron sloop-yacht on the lines of the <i>Mischief</i>,
-but much larger, and he produced the <i>Priscilla</i>. But while she was
-building there was quietly begun another yacht, the <i>Puritan</i>, owned
-and built in Boston from designs by an almost unheard-of architect, Mr.
-Edward Burgess, who previously to this performance had been renowned
-only as a student of insects!</p>
-
-<p>“The stout oak keel of the new <i>Puritan</i> was laid upon a lead keel of
-twenty-seven tons, carried down into a deep projecting keel; the plumb
-stem, the sheer, and the long counter suggested the British cutter
-rather than the American sloop; the draft of eight feet six inches was
-greatly in excess of all of the old center-board boats, and the rig was
-essentially that of the cutter rather than of the sloop.”</p>
-
-<p>A struggle decided that she was better than the <i>Priscilla</i>, and in
-the cup races in September she proved herself better than the famous
-English cutter <i>Genesta</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_193">
-<img src="images/i_193.jpg" width="400" height="489" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE CUTTER “MURIEL,” SHOWING THE ENGLISH<br />DEEP-DRAFT TYPE
-OF BUILD AND RIG.</p></div>
-
-<p>Nevertheless, when the <i>Galatea</i>, whose challenge had been postponed
-until 1886, came out, the <i>Puritan</i> had already been distanced by
-an American rival, the <i>Mayflower</i>, practically a larger copy of
-herself, as <i>Galatea</i> was of <i>Genesta</i>, and, therefore, a lead-keeled
-center-board boat, having a cutter-like rig. Trial races showed that
-the <i>Mayflower</i> was able to beat all her beautiful predecessors, and
-again the British contestant was obliged to take a defeat and leave the
-prize in New York.</p>
-
-<p>The result of this last contest (1886) was to cause British yachtsmen
-to abandon their old tonnage rule of measurement and adopt the far
-better modern one of load-line and sail-area measurement. Another
-challenge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span> immediately came from Glasgow, supported by a boat named
-<i>Thistle</i>, built under the new rule; and to oppose it Mr. Burgess
-built the <i>Volunteer</i>, which differed from its predecessors mainly in
-increased draft and tendency toward the cutter model. She easily beat
-the <i>Thistle</i>, and the discouraged foreigners rested for some years
-before trying again to wrest from us the coveted trophy.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_194_1">
-<img src="images/i_194_1.jpg" width="400" height="310" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">“PURITAN.”</p></div>
-
-<p>In 1891, however, there came to New York, from the yards of the
-Herreshoff Brothers, in Rhode Island, a new forty-six-foot yacht, which
-soon put the fame of the <i>Volunteer</i> and all her glorious rivals into
-the background. This was the <i>Gloriana</i>, “remarkable as a daring and
-original departure from the accepted theories.” The radical novelty in
-her form consisted in the great cutting away of her bulk under water
-while preserving the full extent of the water-line, and the making of
-a very deep, heavily loaded keel, trusted for stability. Her hull was
-also novel, consisting of a double skin of thin wood on steel frames,
-while the upper part of the hull projected excessively at both ends.
-She was everywhere a winner, and was immediately followed by a smaller
-boat, the <i>Dilemma</i>, whose keel was an almost rectangular plate of
-steel, the ballast, which alone was trusted for stability, being in the
-form of a cigar-shaped cylinder of lead bolted to the lower edge of the
-“fin,” as this kind of keel was appropriately styled. Many boats of
-this pattern were soon afloat, most of them highly successful at home
-and abroad, and carrying a surprising spread of canvas.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_194_2">
-<img src="images/i_194_2.jpg" width="400" height="282" alt="" />
-
-<p><span class="smallest">FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY J. S. JOHNSTON AND PURVIANCE.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">“MAYFLOWER.”</p></div>
-
-<p>The year 1893 brought another challenge for the cup in the person
-of Lord Dunraven, sailing the yacht <i>Valkyrie</i>, but he was met by a
-new, well-proved<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span> Herreshoff fin-keel, the <i>Vigilant</i> (built of a new
-alloy—Tobin bronze), and handsomely defeated. The following season the
-<i>Vigilant</i> went to England, and found herself equally overmatched by
-the <i>Britannia</i>, owned by the Prince of Wales, while <i>Valkyrie II</i> was
-wrecked. In 1895 Lord Dunraven sent a second challenge, backed by a new
-<i>Valkyrie (III)</i>; and this produced a fresh American contestant, again
-designed and built by the Herreshoffs, named <i>Defender</i>. The races came
-off amid intense public excitement, outside of Sandy Hook, but were
-most unsatisfactory; “in the first, <i>Defender</i> won; in the second,
-<i>Valkyrie</i> was disqualified as the result of a foul, and Lord Dunraven
-declined to sail a third.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_195">
-<img src="images/i_195.jpg" width="550" height="398" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">COMPARISON OF OLD AND NEW TYPES.<br />
-
-<span class="smallest">1. “America,” 1851, water-line 90 feet.—2. “Cambria,” 1868,
-water-line 100 feet.—3. “Magic,” 1857-69, water-line 79 feet.—4.
-“Sappho,” 1867, water-line 120 feet.—5. “Mischief,” 1879, water-line
-61 feet.—6. “Puritan,” 1885, water-line 81 feet.—7. “Genesta,” 1884,
-water-line 81 feet.—8. “Thistle,” 1887, water-line 86 feet.—9.
-“Volunteer,” 1887, water-line 85 feet.—10. “Gloriana,” 1891,
-water-line 45 feet.—11. “Wasp,” 1892, water-line 46 feet.—12. “El
-Chico,” 1892, water-line 25 feet.</span></p></div>
-
-<p>Such has been the history of this long series of races for the America
-Cup, and such the development of its defenders; but while they and
-their work have stimulated interest in yachting all over the world,
-they have really not influenced it greatly, because all of the later
-boats competing were not practical yachts, in which one might cruise
-and live afloat, and enjoy life with his friends, but “machines” in
-which every quality tending to comfort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span> and safety was sacrificed to
-the requirements of speed. In fact, the owners of these “big boats”
-kept small, handy, comfortable yachts for their own enjoyment, and the
-racers were as a rule sailed by a skipper and crew of professional
-racing sailors.</p>
-
-<p>There are said to be over two hundred yacht-clubs in the United States,
-enrolling about four thousand yachts, an eighth of which are steam or
-electric boats, scattered wherever any water suitable for the sport
-exists. With the lakes and rivers we have nothing to do, except to
-say that the yachtsmen of Montreal and Quebec are really salt-water
-sailors, for they cruise in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and elsewhere at
-sea as well as their fellow-sportsmen of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
-At the other extreme the Havana Yacht-Club has American members who
-take their boats to the West Indies every winter. Bermuda is another
-favorite resort, and the scene of lively races with a local, narrow
-sort of craft, called a “flyer,” which will beat almost anything if
-only it can be kept right side up.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>On the Pacific coast, ... wherever there is a bay that will afford
-a harbor, and a town that will support people, the yacht is used as
-a vehicle of pleasure.... Many of the San Francisco boats are large
-schooners, a number are powerful sea-going sloops, while of smaller
-craft there is an abundance of almost every type, although the New
-York catboat and the flat-bottomed sharpie of Long Island Sound are
-seldom met with, and seem not to be in favor.... Pacific yachters
-appreciate the good points of the yawl, for the squalls which blow
-over the waters of the west coast are sudden and severe, and no rig
-meets these conditions of weather so well as does the yawl.</p></div>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_196">
-<img src="images/i_196.jpg" width="300" height="384" alt="" />
-
-<p class="noindent">
-<span class="smallest sans">DRAWN BY W. TABER<br />FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER BLACKBURN.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">THE NEWPORT CATBOAT.</p></div>
-
-<p>The most important and numerous yachting interest of the country,
-however, as would be expected, is along the northeastern seaboard,
-where, measured by numbers and the investment in boats, wharves,
-club-houses, and equipments generally, it surpasses any other district
-in the world. More than one hundred clubs exist between Maine and
-Philadelphia.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The earliest form of yacht [as Mr. F. W. Pangborn reminds us in “The
-Century” for May, 1892] was, of course, a rowboat with a sail....
-From the primitive sprit-sail pleasure-boat comes the ever-present
-and universally favored center-board catboat, a type of yacht which,
-for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span> speed, handiness, and unsafeness, has never been surpassed.
-Keel catboats are also built, but the typical American “cat” is
-the center-board boat of light draft, big beam, and huge sail.
-The two objectionable points about boats of this class are their
-capsizability, and their bad habit of yawing when sailing before
-the wind. Yet the cat is the handiest light-weather boat made. It
-is very fast, quick in stays, and simple in rig; but it can never
-become a first-class seaworthy type of yacht. It belongs among the
-fair-weather pleasure-boats....</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_197_1">
-<img src="images/i_197_1.jpg" width="300" height="252" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">RIG OF THE YAWL.</p></div>
-
-<p>From the center-board catboat grew the jib-and-mainsail sloop, a type
-of yacht which has always been noted for its great speed and general
-unhandiness. Small yachts of this kind are always racers, and the
-interest in racing is sufficient to keep them in the lists of popular
-boats. In design they are like the catboats, the only difference
-being in their rig. These two boats, the center-board cat and the
-jib-and-mainsail sloop, are what yachters call “sandbaggers”; that is
-to say, their ballast consists of bags of sand which are shifted to
-windward with every tack and thus serve to keep the yachts right side
-up. A boat ballasted in this manner can carry more sail than rightly
-belongs on her sticks, but she cannot be very safe or comfortable.
-Her place is in the regatta. It is not beyond the truth to assert
-that the sandbaggers constitute probably two fifths of the total of
-small yachts. They will never cease to be popular, for the reason
-that speed and sport are synonymous terms with a great many yachters,
-and no one can deny that these boats, like Brother Jasper’s sun, “do
-move.”</p></div>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_197_2">
-<img src="images/i_197_2.jpg" width="300" height="295" alt="" />
-
-<p class="noindent"><span class="smallest sans">DRAWN BY W. TABER,<br />
-FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER BLACKBURN.<br />
-ENGRAVED BY A. NEGRI.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">A SANDBAGGER SLOOP.</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Passing the sandbaggers, the next popular and most universally used
-yacht is the ballasted sloop. A sloop may be a center-board boat,
-or a keel boat, or a combination of both. She has only one mast and
-carries a topmast. Her sails are many, and, like the cutter, she is
-permitted to carry clouds of canvas in a race. Technically speaking,
-a cutter differs from a sloop only in one point, as the terms “sloop”
-and “cutter” really apply to the rig of the yacht. The cutter has a
-sail set from her stem to her masthead; the sloop has not. This sail
-is called a forestay-sail, and its presence marks the cutter-rig.
-The term “cutter,” however, is usually applied to the long, narrow,
-deep-keeled vessel, and has in common parlance grown to mean a boat
-of that type. It is in that sense that it is generally understood.
-It is worthy of notice that nearly all yachters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span> who cruise about in
-summer, and especially those who are fond of speedy boats, use either
-sloops or cutters; and it is remarkable to see how much comfort can
-be found in boats of these types, even when quite small....</p></div>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_198_1">
-<img src="images/i_198_1.jpg" width="250" height="202" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A SHARPIE.</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The average yachting man, if he be of that stuff of which good seamen
-are made, soon finds his chief delight in being master of his own
-vessel. He likes to feel that it is his skill, his prowess, his
-intellect, that rule the ship in which he sails; and finding this
-complete mastery of the vessel to be impossible aboard a big boat,
-he longs for one which he can handle alone. This independent and
-sportsmanlike instinct of the American yachter has culminated in a
-liking for certain classes of very small boats,—“single-handers” they
-are called,—and this liking has given impetus to the building of some
-little vessels which are really marvels in their way. Simplicity
-and handiness of rig have been considered in their construction,
-and this has led in many cases to the adoption of what is known as
-the yawl style, a rig which for safety and convenience has never
-been surpassed by any other. The yawl is really a schooner with very
-small mainsail. For small cruising-yachts it is an excellent rig,
-and preferable to the cat rig. Cat-yawls are also in use; they are
-merely yawls without jibs. With such rigs as these a yachter can go
-alone upon the water without fear of trouble and with no need of
-assistance. Naturally, with men of moderate means who love the water,
-these small single-handers have become very popular. Some of them are
-not over sixteen feet long, yet the solitary skipper-crew-and-cook,
-all in one, of such a boat finds in his yacht comfortable
-sleeping-quarters, cook-stove, dinner-table, and all necessary
-“fixings.” The ingenuity displayed in fitting out the cabins of these
-little boats is quite remarkable.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_198_2">
-<img src="images/i_198_2.jpg" width="250" height="208" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A BUCKEYE.</p></div>
-
-<p>Of the many nondescript rigs which are applied to small yachts,
-two are in common use. One of these is the sharpie, a simple
-leg-o’-mutton rig used with flat-bottomed boats. Large sharpies
-have been built with fine cabin accommodations, and such boats are
-particularly adapted to the shoal waters of the South. They are fast
-sailers, but owing to their long, narrow bodies and light draft, are
-not always trustworthy. They are cheaper to build than boats of other
-designs....</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Buckeyes are favored only in the South. Originally the buckeye was
-a log hollowed out and shaped into a boat, and was used by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
-negroes. To-day, however, buckeyes are built upon carefully drawn
-plans, and many of them are excellent vessels. They are common on
-the coast waters south of the Delaware Bay, and are used chiefly for
-hunting-boats, their cheapness, handiness, and roominess rendering
-them useful to the sportsman. A true buckeye is a double-ender,
-but some large ones have been built with an overhang stern, which
-destroys the ideal and creates a new kind of craft.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_198_3">
-<img src="images/i_198_3.jpg" width="250" height="234" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">OLD-STYLE PIROGUE WITH LEEBOARD.</p></div>
-
-<p>A few years ago the sailing public was surprised by the appearance
-upon the waters of a spider-like contrivance which its friends said
-was a “catamaran.” This new claimant for yachting favor was like
-the raft of the South Sea Islanders only in name; in fact, it was
-not a catamaran at all, but a new device for racing over the water
-by means of sails. Wonderful feats were predicted for the future of
-the catamaran, and it certainly did accomplish something; but after
-a long and fair trial (for the yachter, no matter how bigoted he
-may be, will always try a new boat) it was discarded as a useless,
-dangerous, and decidedly unsatisfactory kind of craft....</p>
-
-<p>Leaving the discussion of the odds and ends of yacht styles, we
-come, by natural progress, to a type which is destined to greater
-popularity as time goes on, and yachters learn the ways of the sea
-and the best methods of dealing with them. Although the schooner
-is generally deemed a big yacht, it is nevertheless a fact that
-small schooners are desirable boats to have, and that the number of
-schooners of small tonnage is increasing. There is no denying the
-advantage of the schooner’s rig over that of the sloop. A schooner
-of forty feet is handier, safer, and less expensive to run than a
-forty-foot sloop. The rig of the schooner is peculiarly adapted
-to all weathers, and a small crew can handle such a vessel with
-ease, when to manage a sloop of equal size would require the best
-efforts of “all hands and the cook.” The reason for this is that the
-schooner’s sails can be attended to one at a time, which is not the
-case with the big-mainsail sloop.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_199">
-<img src="images/i_199.jpg" width="600" height="167" alt="" />
-
-<p class="right">
-<span class="smallest sans">FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY WALTER BLACKBURN.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">YACHTS WAITING FOR A BREEZE.</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>It is the small yachter [Mr. Pangborn declares in conclusion] who
-gives to the sport its wide popularity, and makes yachting so
-universally loved by men who are fond of aquatic pleasuring. The
-small yachter is everywhere upon the waters. From the coast of Maine,
-from the shores of the harbor of the Golden Gate, from the beaches
-of the Atlantic seaboard, and from the borders of the inland lakes,
-he can be seen, all summer long, sailing about in his little vessel,
-and enjoying in all its fullness the excitement and delight of this
-most noble and health-giving sport. With a pluck and energy that
-mark the true lover of the sea, and a tact and skill that bespeak
-the real sailor, he handles his little craft, in fair weather and in
-foul, in a manner that leaves no room for doubt as to its fitness for
-the work which he is doing; for, whether he sail alone, or with the
-help of his friends, or that of a hired man to run his boat, he is
-always the master of his vessel,—which is seldom the case with the
-proprietor of the big boat,—and is in reality a “yachtsman” under
-all circumstances, at all times, and in all weathers. He must be
-cool-headed and calm in times of peril, affable and courteous on all
-social occasions, and generous and prompt to respond to all calls
-upon his courage—in brief, a gentleman.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_200">
-<img src="images/i_200.jpg" width="425" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE “ADLER” PLUNGING TOWARD THE REEF AT SAMOA.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">DANGERS OF THE DEEP</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_201.jpg" width="75" height="74" alt="ornate capital N" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">Neither</span> ships of the stanchest steel, nor seamen however skilful, nor
-pilots never so knowing, can wholly avoid the dangers of a seafaring
-life. Experience in reading the signs of the ocean and of the skies,
-surveyors’ charts of coasts and harbors, added to the appliances of
-powerful modern machinery, have lessened the perils, it is true, since
-the old times; yet even now ships sail proudly out of sunny havens,
-their topsails watched by loving eyes till they disappear at sunset,
-and are never seen again. On a calm day in 1782 the great hundred-gun
-line-of-battle-ship <i>Royal George</i> sank at her anchors in the harbor
-of Spithead, carrying down almost a thousand souls; thirty years ago
-the <i>Captain</i>, then one of the finest of England’s steam turret-ships,
-capsized at sea, and not a man survived. Each of these vessels was
-perhaps the best of its kind in the world. No better navigators exist
-than naval officers, yet they ran the historic old steam-frigate
-<i>Kearsarge</i> on Roncador Reef, in the Caribbean Sea, in broad daylight,
-and left her there a total wreck. Not a year passes that does not
-record some dire calamity on the ocean, and many lesser accidents.</p>
-
-<p>The wild oceanic storms are responsible for fewer of these than
-anything else—I mean the mere power of wind and waves in the open
-sea. When a captain has sea-room, and knows in advance, as he almost
-always may, of the coming of a storm, so that he can make everything
-snug, the loss of his vessel, or even serious damage to her, is not
-common. Yet the mere violence of the gale has overturned, beaten down,
-and extinguished the greater part of the Newfoundland fishing-fleet
-again and again, and doubtless many of the ships that are recorded as
-“missing” have been sunk simply by overwhelming waves.</p>
-
-<p>Certain rare and extraordinary mishaps nevertheless may meet a vessel
-in the open ocean. One of these is a stroke of lightning, powerful
-enough to set a ship on fire in spite of her lightning-rods, and such a
-fire is likely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span> never to be quenched. Another extraordinary occurrence
-would be an overwhelming waterspout, such as not infrequently is seen
-in the tropics, especially along the Chinese coast, where it often
-plays havoc with fishing junks. A third unusual, yet possible, peril
-is the meeting with those waves of sudden and extraordinary size and
-volume which sometimes engulf vessels in storms that otherwise might
-be safely weathered, or are surmounted only by a miracle, as it were.
-These are said to be produced in some cyclones, as one of the effects
-of that whirling form of storm, and are often called tidal waves, but
-the tide has nothing to do with their formation or progress.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_202">
-<img src="images/i_202.jpg" width="500" height="417" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE U. S. S. “ONEIDA” AFTER COLLISION WITH A STEAMSHIP.</p></div>
-
-<p>To say that a ship in mid-ocean might be destroyed by an earthquake
-seems paradoxical and absurd, yet it is true. Whenever a subterranean
-convulsion occurs beneath or at the edge of the sea, the water will be
-agitated in proportion to its force. Strike a tub of water a gentle
-tap and see how its liquid contents shiver and ripple. Watch a railway
-train running at the edge of a body of water, and observe how the water
-trembles under the percussion of the wheels upon the ground.</p>
-
-<p>Earthquake shocks give rise sometimes to great disturbances, either by
-a direct jar to the water, or by setting in motion waves whose rolling
-does<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span> damage, especially in confined harbors. Sometimes a port will be
-suddenly invaded by a wave, the cause of which was an earthquake, which
-rolls in upreared like a wall, and carries death and destruction in its
-course. The principal port of the island of St. Thomas, in the West
-Indies, was once devastated by this means. The incoming wave is said
-to have been over forty feet high, and broke inland, destroying much
-property and causing many deaths. “So tremendous was this breaker that
-it landed a large vessel on a hillside half a mile from the harbor.”</p>
-
-<p>Such catastrophes are not uncommon in volcanic districts, where the
-ocean retorts with terrible vengeance when it is struck by the land.
-That appalling explosion in 1883 of Krakatoa, in the Strait of Sunda,
-was followed on neighboring coasts by a series of vast billows that
-rolled inland, deluging a wide extent of shore, sweeping away over 150
-villages, and crushing or drowning more than 30,000 persons. Within a
-few years the coasts of northern Japan have been inundated repeatedly
-by earthquake waves with similar dire calamities, and they are likely
-to occur again. Now and then earthquakes are felt even in the open sea,
-far from land. Thus, Captain Lecky, a scientific writer upon the sea,
-tells us that in one instance where he was present, the inkstand upon
-the captain’s table was jerked upward against the ceiling, where it
-left an unmistakable record of the occurrence; and yet this vessel was
-steaming along in smooth water, many hundreds of fathoms deep. “The
-concussions,” he says, “were so smart that passengers were shaken off
-their seats, and, of course, thought that the vessel had run ashore.”
-All this disturbance was, nevertheless, only the result of a shock at
-the bottom; and when the non-elastic nature of water is considered, the
-severity of the jar is not surprising.</p>
-
-<p>It would seem as though in the vast breadth of the “world of waters,”
-and with nothing to obstruct the view, two ships might easily give
-one another a wide berth; yet a collision is one of the ever-present
-dangers of voyaging, even far from land. It is to avoid this peril that
-all the maritime nations have agreed upon certain signals, and “rules
-of the road” which are the same in all parts of the world, and without
-which it would now be almost impossible to carry on commerce or travel
-on the water.</p>
-
-<p>The rules of the road say that when two vessels are approaching one
-another, head on, each shall turn off to the right far enough to avoid
-the other; that when two vessels are crossing one another’s courses,
-the one which has the other on her starboard (right hand) must turn to
-starboard (the right), and go behind the other vessel, while the latter
-continues along her course; and that a steam vessel must always get out
-of the way of a sailing vessel, one at anchor or disabled, or a vessel
-with another in tow.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span></p>
-
-<p>It is presumed that every ship will keep a sharp lookout, and that in
-the daytime two approaching ships will see each other in time to keep
-safely apart; but in the darkness of night none could be safe unless
-all carried lights by which the position and character of each could be
-determined.</p>
-
-<p>In ancient times this matter of lights at sea was a much more
-troublesome one than now. We know that the Roman navy managed it
-somehow, and had methods of signaling by lanterns and torches. In
-medieval and early times, say up to a couple of centuries ago, a ship’s
-lights were a much more conspicuous and bothersome part of her than
-now, when, indeed, electricity has simplified as well as perfected
-signaling as much as it has benefited general illumination on ship’s
-board. In such ships as those of the Armada, and long afterward, three
-huge lanterns made of ornamental iron-work, sometimes large enough
-to enable a man to move about inside them, surmounted the elevated
-after-quarter; and these were filled with dozens of great candles.
-How important candles were in the stores of one of these old ships is
-shown by the fact that we still call a merchant who outfits vessels a
-<i>ship-chandler</i>. Regular rules were formulated for judging of a ship’s
-position and movements, and how you ought to steer by the way these
-beacons grouped themselves. The introduction of whale oil gradually
-superseded candles and as the sperm-lamp did not require a glass house,
-smaller lanterns took the place of the big ones, until finally, by
-aid of lenses, reflectors, and kerosene, and still more lately by the
-use of electricity, ship’s lights have become the small, handy, and
-powerful ones they are to-day.</p>
-
-<p>The present rules as to lights are these—using the language of a United
-States navy officer, Lieut. John M. Ellicott, who has written many
-instructive and entertaining essays on sea-affairs:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>When you face toward a ship’s bow the side at your right hand is
-called the starboard side, and the side at your left hand is called
-the port side. On her starboard side a ship carries at night a green
-light, and it is so shut in by the two sides of a box that it cannot
-be seen from the port side or from behind. On her port side she
-carries a red light, and it is so shut in that it cannot be seen from
-the starboard side or from behind. If the ship is a steamship she carries
-a big white light at her foremast-head, but if she is a sailing
-vessel she does not. This white masthead light can be seen from all
-around except from behind....</p>
-
-<p>It is for the red and green lights, commonly known as the side
-lights, that the officer of the deck most intently watches (when the
-lookout warns him that lights are in sight), for by them he can tell
-which way the vessel is going. If her red light shows, he knows that
-her port side is toward him and she is crossing to his left; if it is
-her green light, her starboard side is toward him and she is crossing
-to his right; but if both the red and green are showing, she is
-heading straight in his direction.... If a vessel has another vessel
-in tow, she carries two masthead lights instead of one; and when a
-vessel is at anchor she has no side lights or masthead light, but a
-single white light made fast to a stay where it can be seen from all
-around her.</p>
-
-<p>In rivers and crowded harbors it is often impossible to follow the
-rules of the road; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span> sometimes even at sea the officer of the deck
-of one vessel discovers that the other is not heeding the rules. Then
-the steam-whistle is used to tell the other vessel what the first
-is doing. Thus, one whistle means “I am going to the right”; two
-whistles mean “I am going to the left”; and three whistles mean “I am
-backing”; while a series of short toots means “Look out for yourself;
-get out of the way!”</p>
-
-<p>There is one class of vessels which is most annoying to those who
-direct the course of large steamers. These are small fishing-vessels.
-On the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, on the coast of Spain, and on
-the coasts of China and Japan big fleets of these little vessels
-are found at all times. They show no lights at night, preferring to
-save the expense of oil, and take their chances of being sent to the
-bottom; but when they see a big ship rushing down upon them, they
-light a torch and flare it about. Often they pay for their folly with
-their lives. The torch is seen too late, or not seen at all, and the
-great iron bow of the steamship crushes into the frail little craft,
-perhaps cutting her clean in two; and the unhappy fishermen sink into
-the foaming wake of the churning propellers, leaving not a soul to
-tell their wives what became of them.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_205">
-<img src="images/i_205.jpg" width="500" height="346" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">ELECTRIC-LIGHT SIGNALS AT SEA: ARDOIS SYSTEM.</p></div>
-
-<p>Signaling with lights is principally of use to men-of-war, where, also,
-lanterns hung in the rigging in a particular order have a definite
-significance. For long-distance signaling the best system is that
-invented by Lieutenant Very, U. S. N. These night-signals “consist of a
-white, a red, and a green<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span> star, each fired into the air from a pistol,
-so that by firing one, two, or three of them in quick succession and in
-different orders, with a pause between the groups, different letters or
-signal numbers can be made until a sentence is complete.” They can be
-easily read from vessels twelve miles away. For nearer work the system
-of the Spanish navy officer, Ardois, which consists in flashing and
-extinguishing, by means of a switchboard on deck, a series of red and
-white electric lamps in the rigging, serves very well; and close at
-hand a signal-man waves an incandescent electric bulb by night as he
-would a flag by day.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_206">
-<img src="images/i_206.jpg" width="270" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE “VERY” ROCKET-SIGNAL AT SEA.</p></div>
-
-<p>It is, however, when the land is approached that the sailor’s perils
-become menacing. Here Old Neptune is still a match for us when he
-asserts himself. Nevertheless, we must go upon the restless waters,
-and must risk a contest with their power along the coasts, where the
-ocean’s <i>line of battle</i> may be said to be. Therefore, every effort
-has always been made by men on land to be of aid to their brethren at
-sea by erecting beacons to guide them by night as well as by day, by
-marking the channels, so that hidden shoals, rocks, and obstructions
-may be avoided, and by contrivances to save life and property when the
-fury of the gale renders seamanship futile, and the noble ship is cast
-away in the surf thundering on some wild shore, to break up in a few
-hours.</p>
-
-<p>What could be more humiliating to our pride, as well as terrifying to
-our hearts, than such a scene as that at Samoa, in 1889, when a whole
-fleet of ships, including powerful men-of-war, was wrecked while at
-anchor in the beautiful harbor of Apia. Of small use, then, were all
-their charts and lighthouses, buoys and breakwaters!</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The disturbed state of affairs in Samoa caused the assemblage there,
-during March, 1889, of three small German men-of-war, <i>Adler</i>,
-<i>Olga</i>, and <i>Eber</i>, the British corvette <i>Calliope</i>, and the American
-steamships <i>Trenton</i>, <i>Vandalia</i> and <i>Nipsic</i>. The <i>Trenton</i>,
-Captain Farquhar, was one of our largest war-ships at that time,
-and the flagship of Rear-Admiral Kimberley; the <i>Vandalia</i>, Captain
-Schoonmaker, was somewhat smaller, and the <i>Nipsic</i>, Commander Mullan,
-was still less in size. On March 15 a hurricane demolished the whole of
-this fleet, except one, and ten merchant vessels besides, and caused
-the loss of nearly one hundred and fifty lives. It is an extraordinary
-story, which has been fully related by Mr. John P. Dunning, from whose
-article in “St. Nicholas” for February, 1890, the accompanying facts
-and illustrations are drawn.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_207">
-<img src="images/i_207.jpg" width="300" height="340" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE “CALLIOPE” ESCAPING FROM APIA HARBOR.</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The harbor in which the disaster occurred is a small semicircular
-bay, around the inner side of which lies the town of Apia. A coral
-reef, visible at low water, extends in front of the harbor from the
-eastern to the western extremity, a distance of nearly two miles.
-A break in this reef, probably a quarter of a mile wide, forms a
-gateway to the harbor. The space within the bay where ships can lie
-at anchor is very small, as a shoal extends some distance out from
-the eastern shore, and on the other side another coral reef runs well
-out into the bay. The war-vessels were anchored in the deep water in
-front of the American consulate. The <i>Eber</i> and <i>Nipsic</i> were nearest
-the shore. There were ten or twelve sailing-vessels, principally
-small schooners lying in the shallow water west of the men-of-war.
-The storm was preceded by several weeks of bad weather, and on
-Friday, March 15, the wind increased and there was every indication
-of a hard blow. The war-ships made preparation for it by lowering
-topmasts and making all the spars secure, and steam was also raised
-to guard against the possibility of the anchors not holding.</p>
-
-<p>The wind rose to a hurricane and was accompanied by heavy,
-wind-driven rain, and when toward morning it became evident that
-some smaller ships were already ashore, and that the war-ships were
-dragging their anchors in spite of every effort, the whole town was
-awake, and much of it down by the beach seeking what shelter it could
-from the sleet-like blast. This night of horror gradually lightened
-into dawn, when it was seen that all the war-ships had been swept
-from their former moorings and were bearing down toward the inner
-reef. The decks swarmed with men clinging to anything affording a
-hold. The hulls of the ships were tossing about like corks, and the
-decks were being deluged with water as every wave swept in from the
-open ocean. Several sailing-vessels had gone ashore in the western
-part of the bay. Those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span> most plainly visible now were the <i>Eber</i>,
-<i>Adler</i>, and <i>Nipsic</i>, very close together and only a few yards from
-the reef.</p>
-
-<p>The little gunboat <i>Eber</i> was making a desperate struggle, but her
-doom was certain. Suddenly she shot forward, the current bore her off
-to the right, and her bow struck the port quarter of the <i>Nipsic</i>,
-carrying away several feet of the <i>Nipsic’s</i> rail and one boat. The
-<i>Eber</i> then fell back and fouled with the <i>Olga</i>, and after that she
-swung around broadside to the wind, was lifted high on the crest of a
-great wave and hurled with awful force upon the reef. In an instant
-there was not a vestige of her to be seen. Every timber must have
-been shattered, and half the poor creatures aboard of her crushed to
-death before they felt the waters closing above their heads. Hundreds
-of people were on the beach by this time, and the work of destruction
-had occurred within full view of them all. They stood for a moment
-appalled by the awful scene, and a cry of horror arose from the lips
-of every man who had seen nearly a hundred of his fellow-creatures
-perish in an instant. Then with one accord they all rushed to the
-water’s edge nearest the point where the <i>Eber</i> had foundered. The
-natives ran into the surf far beyond the point where a white man
-could have lived, and stood waiting to save any who might rise from
-the water. There were six officers and seventy men on the <i>Eber</i> when
-she struck the reef, and of these five officers and sixty-six men
-were lost. This was about six o’clock in the morning.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_208">
-<img src="images/i_208.jpg" width="600" height="414" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">“THE SAMOANS STOOD BATTLING AGAINST THE SURF, RISKING
-THEIR LIVES TO SAVE THE AMERICAN SAILORS.”</p></div>
-
-<p>During the excitement attending that calamity the other vessels
-had been for the time forgotten, but it was soon noticed that the
-positions of several of them had become more alarming. The <i>Adler</i>
-had been swept across the bay, close to the reef, and in half an hour
-she was lifted on top of the reef and turned completely over on her
-side. Nearly every man was thrown into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span> the water, but as almost the
-entire hull was exposed, all but twenty succeeded in regaining her
-deck, and the remainder were rescued toward the close of the day when
-almost exhausted.</p>
-
-<p>Just after the <i>Adler</i> struck, the attention of every one was
-directed toward the <i>Nipsic</i>. She was standing off the reef with her
-head to the wind, but the three anchors which she had out at the time
-were not holding; and orders were given to attach a hawser to a heavy
-eight-inch rifle on the forecastle and throw the gun overboard. As
-the men were in the act of doing this, the <i>Olga</i> bore down on the
-<i>Nipsic</i> and struck her amidships with awful force. Her bowsprit
-passed over the side of the <i>Nipsic</i>, and, after carrying away one
-boat and splintering the rail, came in contact with the smokestack,
-which was struck fairly in the center and fell to the deck with a
-crash like thunder. For a moment it was difficult to realize what had
-happened, and great confusion followed. The iron smokestack rolled
-from side to side with every movement of the vessel, until finally
-heavy blocks were placed under it. By that time the <i>Nipsic</i> had
-swung around and was approaching the reef, and it seemed certain that
-she would go down in the same way as had the <i>Eber</i>. Captain Mullan
-saw that any further attempt to save the vessel would be useless,
-so he gave the orders to beach her. She had a straight course of
-about two hundred yards to the sandy beach in front of the American
-consulate, where she stuck and stood firm.</p>
-
-<p>Two attempts to lower boats were failures and every man crowded to
-the forecastle. A line was thrown, double hawsers were soon made fast
-from the vessel to the shore, and the natives and others gathered
-around the lines, where the voices of officers shouting to the men on
-deck were mingled with the loud cries and singing of the Samoans. One
-by one, and in a very orderly manner, the men of the <i>Nipsic</i> came
-down the hawsers toward the shore, but many would never have reached
-it, had it not been for the assistance of the Samoans, who, at the
-peril of their lives, stood in the boiling torrent, grasping those
-whose hold was broken from the rope.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile, the four large men-of-war, <i>Trenton</i>, <i>Calliope</i>,
-<i>Vandalia</i>, and <i>Olga</i>, were still afloat and in a comparatively
-safe position; but about ten o’clock the <i>Trenton</i> was seen to be
-in a helpless condition; her rudder and propeller were both gone,
-and there was nothing but her anchors to hold her up against the
-unabated force of the storm. The <i>Vandalia</i> and <i>Calliope</i> were also
-in danger, drifting back toward the reef near the point where lay the
-wreck of the <i>Adler</i>; and they came closer together every minute,
-until finally the English ship struck the <i>Vandalia</i> and tore a great
-hole in her bow. Then Captain Kane of the <i>Calliope</i> determined to
-try to steam out of the harbor as his only hope, and he at once cut
-loose from all his anchors. The <i>Calliope’s</i> head swung around to the
-wind and her engines were worked to their utmost power. Great waves
-broke over her bow and she gained headway at first only inch by inch,
-but her speed gradually increased until it became evident that she
-could leave the harbor. This manœuver of the British ship is regarded
-as one of the most daring in naval annals—the one desperate chance
-offered her commander to save his vessel and the three hundred lives
-aboard.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Trenton’s</i> fires had gone out by that time, and she lay helpless
-almost in the path of the <i>Calliope</i>. The decks were swarming with
-men, but, facing death as they were, they recognized the heroic
-struggle of the British ship, and a great shout went up from aboard
-the <i>Trenton</i>. “Three cheers for the <i>Calliope</i>!” was the sound that
-reached the ears of the British tars as they passed out of the harbor
-in the teeth of the storm; and the heart of every Englishman went out
-to the brave American sailors who gave that parting tribute to the
-Queen’s ship.</p>
-
-<p>When the excitement on the <i>Vandalia</i> which followed the collision
-with the <i>Calliope</i> had subsided, it was determined to beach the
-vessel, and straining every means at hand to avoid the dreaded reef,
-she moved slowly across the harbor until her bow stuck in the sand,
-about two hundred yards off shore and probably eighty yards from the
-stem of the <i>Nipsic</i>. Her engines were stopped and the men in the
-engine-room and fire-room below were ordered on deck. The ship swung
-around broadside to the shore, and it was thought at first that her
-position was comparatively safe, as it was believed that the storm
-would abate in a few hours, and the two hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span> and forty men on
-board could be rescued then; but the wind seemed to increase in fury,
-and as the hull of the steamer sank lower the force of the waves grew
-more violent, yet no one on shore was able to render the least aid.</p>
-
-<p>These terrible scenes had detracted attention from the other two
-men-of-war still afloat; but about four o’clock in the afternoon
-the positions of the <i>Trenton</i> and <i>Olga</i> became most alarming. The
-flagship had been in a helpless condition for hours, being without
-rudder or propeller, while volumes of water poured in through her
-hawser-pipes. Men never fought against adverse circumstances with
-more desperation than the officers and men of the <i>Trenton</i> displayed
-during those hours, yet the vessel was slowly forced over toward
-the eastern reef. Destruction seemed imminent, as the great vessel
-was pitching heavily, and her stern was but a few feet from the
-reef. This point was a quarter of a mile from shore, and if the
-<i>Trenton</i> had struck the reef there, it is probable that not a life
-would have been saved. A skilful manœuver, suggested by Lieutenant
-Brown, saved the ship from destruction. Every man was ordered into
-the port rigging, and the compact mass of bodies was used as a sail.
-The wind struck against the men in the rigging and forced the vessel
-out into the bay again. She soon commenced to drift back against the
-<i>Olga</i>, which was still standing off the reef and holding up against
-the storm more successfully than any other vessel in the harbor
-had done, and in spite of every effort on the part of both ships a
-collision took place which severely damaged both. Fortunately, the
-vessels drifted apart, whereupon the <i>Olga</i> steamed ahead toward the
-mud-flats in the eastern part of the bay, and was soon hard and fast
-on the bottom. Not a life was lost, and several weeks later the ship
-was hauled off and saved.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Trenton</i> was now about two hundred feet from the sunken
-<i>Vandalia</i>, and seemed sure to strike her and throw into the water
-the men still clinging to the rigging. It was now after five o’clock,
-and the daylight was beginning to fade away. In a half hour more, the
-<i>Trenton</i> had drifted to within a few yards of the <i>Vandalia’s</i> bow,
-and feelings hard to describe came to the hundreds who watched the
-vessels from the shore.</p>
-
-<p>Presently the last faint rays of daylight faded away, and night came
-down upon the awful scene. The storm was still raging with as much
-fury as at any time during the day. The poor creatures who had been
-clinging for hours to the rigging of the <i>Vandalia</i> were bruised
-and bleeding; but they held on with the desperation of men who were
-hanging between life and death. The ropes had cut the flesh on
-their arms and legs, and their eyes were blinded by the salt spray
-which swept over them. Weak and exhausted as they were, they would
-be unable to stand the terrible strain much longer. The final hour
-seemed to be upon them. The great, black hull of the <i>Trenton</i> was
-almost ready to crash into the stranded <i>Vandalia</i> and grind her
-to atoms. Suddenly a shout was borne across the waters. The sound
-of four hundred and fifty voices was heard above the roar of the
-tempest. “Three cheers for the <i>Vandalia</i>!” was the cry that warmed
-the hearts of the dying men in the rigging.</p>
-
-<p>The shout died away upon the storm, and there arose from the
-quivering masts of the sunken ship a response so feeble it was
-scarcely heard upon the shore. Every heart was melted to pity. “God
-help them!” was passed from one man to another. The cheer had hardly
-ceased when the sound of music came across the water. The <i>Trenton’s</i>
-band was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The thousand men on sea
-and shore had never before heard strains of music at such a time as
-that. An indescribable feeling came over the Americans on the beach
-who listened to the notes of the national song mingled with the
-howling of the storm.</p>
-
-<p>But the collision of the <i>Trenton</i> and <i>Vandalia</i>, instead of
-crushing the latter vessel to pieces, proved to be the salvation of
-the men in the rigging. When the <i>Trenton’s</i> stern finally struck
-the side of the <i>Vandalia</i>, there was no shock, and she swung around
-broadside to the sunken ship. This enabled the men on the <i>Vandalia</i>
-to escape to the deck of the <i>Trenton</i>, and in a short time they were
-all taken off. </p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span></p>
-
-<p>The storm had abated at midnight, and when day dawned there was no
-further cause for alarm. The men were removed from the <i>Trenton</i> and
-provided with quarters on shore.</p>
-
-<p>During the next few days the evidences of the great disaster could be
-seen on every side. In the harbor were the wrecks of four men-of-war:
-the <i>Trenton</i>, <i>Vandalia</i>, <i>Adler</i>, and <i>Eber</i>; and two others, the
-<i>Nipsic</i> and <i>Olga</i>, were hard and fast on the beach and were hauled
-off with great difficulty. The wrecks of ten sailing-vessels also lay
-upon the reefs. On shore, houses and trees were blown down, and the
-beach was strewn with wreckage from one end of the town to the other.</p></div>
-
-<p>Ever since men began to go to sea lights have been placed on shore to
-guide them to a landing-place; but in early times these were nothing
-more than fires on headlands, kindled, perhaps, by the wives and
-children of the captain and his crew of neighbors, when these mariners
-were expected home. These friendly services became a little more
-systematic when merchants began to risk their property on the water;
-and on the shores of the Mediterranean, which we have found to be the
-cradle of civilized navigation and trade, harbor-beacons were erected
-in very early times as guides to a safe anchorage.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The giant statue known as the Colossus, at Rhodes, is supposed to
-have been used as a beacon and lighthouse, a fire burning in the
-palm of its uplifted colossal hand at night. Although the account of
-the Colossus is only a matter of guesswork, it is historically true
-that in those ages of ignorant heedlessness of the need of beacons,
-a lighthouse was built so grand in proportions, so enduring in
-character, that it became known as one of the Seven Wonders of the
-World, and outlived all the others, save the Pyramids, by centuries,
-and in some ways has never been excelled by any similar structure
-in modern times, unless it be by our mammoth marble monument to
-Washington. This was the lighthouse built on the little island of
-Pharos by Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, two hundred and eighty
-years before Christ, to guide vessels into the harbor of Alexandria.
-From all descriptions, it must have closely resembled our Washington
-monument; for it was built of white stone, was square at the base,
-and tapered toward the apex. Open windows were near its top, through
-which the fire within could be seen for thirty miles by vessels at
-sea.</p></div>
-
-<p>The destruction of these beacons in the general smash and ruin that
-seem to have overtaken the world when the Roman empire went to pieces
-is only indicative of the way the darkness of barbarism returned and
-enveloped the minds as well as the works of men, until light broke
-through the clouds again with the rise of organized sea-powers in
-Western Europe. Then beacons were gradually rebuilt, but in almost all
-cases by private hands—the feudal lords of coast estates, the master
-or authorities of sea-ports, the monks in monasteries near dangerous
-landings, and now and then the king at his principal port, setting up
-marks for steering by day and lighting fires on dark nights. Most of
-the latter were hardly more than tar-barrels, which would burn brightly
-in a gale, and the better class were towers of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span> stonework, on top of
-which a mass of coal was ignited in an iron cage, and kept stirred into
-brightness by a watcher.</p>
-
-<p>It was an easy matter to imitate such beacons, and wreckers would
-often set up false lights. Many a fearful tradition has come down of
-the doings of wreckers, not only in England and Spain, but in America
-and in the East. One of their tricks, when they saw a ship approaching
-in the evening, was to hang a lantern upon a horse’s neck, and let
-him graze, well-hobbled, along the beach. This would appear like the
-rocking of a lantern on a vessel at rest—what is called a riding or
-anchor light; and, deceived by this promise of a safe anchorage, the
-stranger would not discover that he had been cheated until his keel
-struck a reef or sandbar, and the pirates had begun their villainous
-attack. It is said to have been a device of this kind which caused
-the wreck in 1812, on the Carolina coast,—whose islands and lagoons
-are reputed to have been infested by such ruffians, there known as
-“bankers,”—of a vessel carrying the beautiful Theodosia Burr, daughter
-of Aaron Burr, and wife of Governor Alston of South Carolina. Her death
-at the hands of these men is illustrated on <a href="#i_172">page 172</a>.</p>
-
-<p>During the reign of Henry VIII of England, an association of mariners
-called, in short, the Guild of the Trinity was chartered and given
-various powers and privileges in connection with the newly instituted
-royal navy and dockyards. It encouraged coast-lights, and in 1573 Queen
-Elizabeth formally placed authority to erect and govern lighthouses and
-coast beacons in the hands of this corporation, and there it remains
-to this day; for its headquarters, Trinity House, on Tower Hill, in
-London, are a recognized office of the British government, answering to
-our Lighthouse Board.</p>
-
-<p>It was not long before it encouraged the founding of a permanent light
-on Eddystone Shoals, a group of reefs near Plymouth, exceedingly
-dangerous because they lie precisely in the track of ships bound
-up or down the English Channel, yet almost invisible. Upon the
-mere standing-room afforded by the crest of this rock, Sir William
-Winstanley managed to erect, two hundred years ago, a tower of wood
-and iron trestle-work, bolted to its foundation and carrying a glass
-room or lantern containing a coal-grate, eighty feet above low-water
-mark. This was completed in 1698. One winter’s experience convinced
-him that it needed strengthening, and in 1699 a case of masonry was
-built about the tower, and made solid to the height of twenty feet,
-while the whole structure was increased to the height of one hundred
-and twenty feet. Then, it is related, Winstanley boasted that the sea
-had not strength enough to tear it down, and all England rejoiced in
-so noble a beacon; but we now know that the construction was faulty,
-in its large diameter, polygonal outline, excess of ornament, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span>
-lack of weight. While Sir William was within it making repairs, four
-years later, the memorable hurricane of November 20, 1703, swept the
-coast, and left scarcely a trace of the tower. Its value had been
-proved, however, and it was replaced, in 1706, by a straight-sided
-tower of oaken timbers, weighted in their lower courses by stone. This
-was designed by an engineer named Rudyerd, and lasted until burned
-down in 1755; and engineers say it was better for its place than was
-the round, solid-based stone tower of Smeaton that followed it, and
-became so celebrated. This was finished in three years, and in 1760 was
-lighted, not by a fire, as of old, but by candles—the first use of such
-an illuminant. This truly illustrious lighthouse remained until a few
-years ago, when it became so racked by the assaults of the sea as to
-be unsafe. It was then replaced by the one that stands there to-day,
-rivaling its magnificent neighbor on the Biscay shore opposite, the
-lighthouse of Carduan, which was built to support a bonfire of oak, but
-has remained to be lighted successively by oil-lamps, by gas-burners,
-and finally by electricity.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_213">
-<img src="images/i_213.jpg" width="600" height="368" alt="" />
-
-<p class="right"><span class="smallest sans">ENGRAVED BY R. C. COLLINS.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">THE WRECK OF THE FIRST MINOT’S LEDGE LIGHTHOUSE.</p></div>
-
-<p>A somewhat similar history belongs to some of the lighthouses on this
-side of the Atlantic. The first one regularly set up in the United
-States was that on the north side of the entrance to Boston harbor,
-erected in 1716; but many others go back to Colonial days—that on
-Sandy Hook,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span> for instance. Perhaps the most interesting history is
-attached to the light on Minot’s Ledge, in Boston harbor. This is a
-dangerous reef, concealed at high water and so exposed that the problem
-of lighting it was much the same as that presented at Eddystone, Bell
-Rock, Dhu Heartach, and other well known islets on the British coast.</p>
-
-<p>The first lighthouse on Minot’s Ledge was built in 1848, and was an
-octagonal tower resting on the tops of eight wrought-iron piles sixty
-feet high, eight inches in diameter, and sunk five feet into the rock.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>These piles were braced together in many ways, and, as they offered
-less surface to the waves than a solid structure, the lighthouse was
-considered by all authorities upon the subject to be exceptionally
-strong. Its great test came in April, 1851. On the fourteenth of that
-month, two keepers being in the lighthouse, an easterly gale set in,
-steadily increasing in force.... On Wednesday, the sixteenth, the
-gale had become a hurricane; and when at times the tower could be
-seen through the mists and sea-drift, it seemed to bend to the shock
-of the waves. At four o’clock that afternoon an ominous proof of the
-fury of the waves on Minot’s Ledge reached the shore—a platform which
-had been built between the piles only seven feet below the floor of
-the keeper’s room. The raging seas, then, were leaping fifty feet in
-the air. Would they reach ten feet higher?—for if so, the house and
-the keepers were doomed. Nevertheless, when darkness set in the light
-shone out as brilliantly as ever, but the gale seemed, if possible,
-then to increase. What agony those two men must have suffered! How
-that dreadful abode must have swayed in the irresistible hurricane,
-and trembled at each crashing sea! The poor unfortunates must have
-known that if those seas, leaping always higher and higher, ever
-reached their house, it would be flung down into the ocean, and they
-would be buried with it beneath the waves.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_214">
-<img src="images/i_214.jpg" width="250" height="473" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A SCREW-PILE OCEAN LIGHTHOUSE.</p></div>
-
-<p>To those hopeless, terrified watchers the entombing sea came at last.
-At one o’clock in the morning the lighthouse bell was heard by those
-on shore to give a mournful clang, and the light was extinguished. It
-was the funeral knell of two patient heroes.</p>
-
-<p>Next day there remained on the rock only eight jagged iron stumps.</p></div>
-
-<p>Thus, everywhere, and in all latitudes, the beacons and wooden towers
-and huge pyramids of long ago have given place to slender spires of
-solid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span> masonry, holding powerful signals perhaps hundreds of feet above
-the waves, and visible as far as the curve of the earth’s surface
-will permit. Yet in place of the sturdy bonfire of oak, or the huge
-iron cage full of coals, there is only a single lamp, whose rays are
-gathered by deep reflectors into a compact bundle of unwasted rays, and
-doubled and redoubled by rows of magnifying lenses until they can dart
-to the furthest horizon in a strong beam of steady light. No longer
-does the mariner trust to his wife to kindle the tar-barrel to guide
-him home. He knows that nowhere is his government more watchful of
-its subjects than in its lighthouse service, and that he may trust to
-having that bright signal to welcome him in the darkness, as well as he
-can trust his own eyes to see it. The United States alone expends over
-$2,500,000 annually in looking after her lighthouses, lightships, and
-buoys.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_215">
-<img src="images/i_215.jpg" width="250" height="434" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE LIGHTHOUSE AT ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA.</p></div>
-
-<p>Indeed, these beacons have become so thickly planted that it has been
-found necessary to distinguish between them in order to avoid mistaking
-one for another. At first this was done by doubling, as in the case of
-New York’s “Highland Lights,” or the twin lights of Thatcher’s Island
-off Cape Ann, or even trebling them as at Nauset, on Cape Cod, but
-now the display is made to vary. Thus some of them are simply fixed
-white lights; some are white and revolve—the whole lantern on the
-summit of the tower being turned on wheels by machinery, and the flame
-disappears for a longer or shorter time; while others are white “flash”
-lights, glancing only for an instant, and then lost for a few seconds,
-or giving a long wink and then a short one with a space of darkness
-between. Some lighthouses show a steady red light; others, alternate
-red and white. By these colors and varying periods of appearance and
-disappearance (noted on charts, and published by the government in a
-general seaman’s guide called the “Coast Pilot”), navigators know which
-light they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span> are looking at when several are in sight. For daylight
-recognition the towers may be painted half black and half white, or in
-stripes or bands or spirals, like the big barber’s pole in front of St.
-Augustine, Florida.</p>
-
-<p>It is impossible here to describe in detail the beautiful machinery
-by which the rays from the large but simple argand kerosene lamp are
-condensed into a single beam and projected through the Fresnel system
-of condensers and lenses, and by which the revolution and “flashing”
-are effected. Petroleum has superseded all other oils for general use,
-but electricity is now being extensively employed in the illumination
-of coast lights, especially in France, where they are introducing new
-principles, such as producing lightning-like flashes with a certain
-recognized regularity, and waving stupendous search-light beams in
-the sky, so that the approach to the coast may be seen when the land
-and lighthouse themselves are still below the horizon. If you have an
-opportunity to go into the lantern of a lighthouse, by all means take
-advantage of it; and if you can be there when a storm is raging, or
-when, on some misty night, the lantern is besieged by migrating birds,
-you will never forget the scene.</p>
-
-<p>On some especially dangerous—because hidden—shoals, reefs, or bars,
-like those off Nantucket or the extreme point of Sandy Hook, it may be
-out of the question or bad policy to erect a lighthouse. Here its place
-is taken by anchoring a stout vessel, built to withstand the severest
-weather, and arranged to carry lanterns at its mastheads.</p>
-
-<p>These are called “lightships,” and they are manned by a crew of keepers
-who have a very monotonous and uncomfortable time of it; yet in some
-cases men have spent twenty years or more in the service.</p>
-
-<p>The most desolate and dangerous lightship station is that of No. 1,
-Nantucket. “Upon this tossing island, out of sight of land, exposed
-to the fury of every tempest, and without a message from home during
-all the stormy months of winter, and sometimes even longer, ten
-men, braving the perils of wind and wave, and the worse terrors of
-isolation, trim the lamps whose light warns thousands of vessels from
-certain destruction, and hold themselves ready to save life when the
-warning is vain.”</p>
-
-<p>Seven years ago Mr. Gustav Kobb&eacute;, and the artist, William Taber, spent
-several days on the lightship and gave a graphic account of the life
-there, which I wish I were able to quote in full.</p>
-
-<p>The anchorage is twenty-four miles out at sea beyond Sankaty head,
-at the extremity of the shoals and rips which make all that space of
-water beyond the visible coast of Nantucket fatal to ships, hundreds of
-which are known to have been beaten to pieces on its treacherous bars.
-She is moored to a 6500-pound mushroom anchor by a chain two inches in
-thickness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span> yet she has been torn adrift twenty-three times, and has
-wandered widely before returning or being overtaken.</p>
-
-<p>“No. 1, Nantucket New South Shoals,” to quote Mr. Kobb&eacute;,</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>is a schooner of two hundred and seventy-five tons, one hundred and
-three feet long, with twenty-four feet breadth of beam, and stanchly
-built of white and live oak. She has two hulls, the space between
-them being filled through holes at short intervals in the inner side
-of the bulwarks with salt.... She has fore-and-aft lantern-masts
-seventy-one feet high, including topmasts, and directly behind each
-of the lantern masts a mast for sails forty-two feet high. Forty-four
-feet up the lantern-masts are day-marks, reddish brown hoop-iron
-gratings, which enable other vessels to sight the lightship more
-readily. The lanterns are octagons of glass in copper frames five
-feet in diameter, four feet nine inches high, with the masts as
-centers. Each pane of glass is two feet long and two feet three
-inches high. There are eight lamps, burning a fixed white light, with
-parabolic reflectors in each lantern, which weighs, all told, about
-a ton. Some nine hundred gallons of oil are taken aboard for service
-during the year. The lanterns are lowered into houses built around
-the masts. The house around the main lantern-mast stands directly
-on the deck, while the foremast lantern-house is a heavily-timbered
-frame three feet high. This is to prevent its being washed away by
-the waves the vessel ships when she plunges into the wintry seas.
-When the lamps have been lighted and the roofs of the lantern-houses
-opened,—they work on hinges, and are raised by tackle,—the lanterns
-are hoisted by means of winches to a point about twenty-five feet
-from the deck. Were they to be hoisted higher they would make the
-ship top-heavy.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_217">
-<img src="images/i_217.jpg" width="600" height="259" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">LIGHTSHIP NO. 1, NANTUCKET NEW SOUTH SHOALS.</p></div>
-
-<p>A conspicuous object forward is the large fog-bell swung ten feet
-above the deck. The prevalence of fog makes life on the South Shoal
-Lightship especially dreary. During one season fifty-five days out of
-seventy were thick, and for twelve consecutive days and nights the
-bell was kept tolling at two-minute intervals.</p></div>
-
-<p>The actual work to be done is small, the daily cleaning of the lamps
-requiring only two or three hours, and other chores being very light,
-and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span> men nearly die of loneliness and “nothing to do.” It is
-pathetic to read how intense and friendly an interest they take in a
-single red buoy anchored near them; and they admit that fog is dreaded
-more because it hides this neighbor than for any other reason.</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Kobb&eacute; tells us that the emotional stress under which this crew
-labors can hardly be realized by any one who has not been through a
-similar experience.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The sailor on an ordinary ship has at least the inspiration of
-knowing that he is bound for somewhere; that in due time his vessel
-will be laid on her homeward course; that storm and fog are but
-incidents of the voyage: he is on a ship that leaps forward full of
-life and energy with every lash of the tempest. But no matter how
-the lightship may plunge and roll, no matter how strong the favoring
-gales may be, she is still anchored two miles southeast of the New
-South Shoal.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_218">
-<img src="images/i_218.jpg" width="600" height="310" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">CLEANING THE LAMPS ON A LIGHTSHIP.</p></div>
-
-<p>Besides enduring the hardships incidental to their duties aboard the
-lightship, the South Shoal crew have done noble work in saving life.
-While the care of the lightship is considered of such importance to
-shipping that the crew are instructed not to expose themselves to
-dangers outside their special line of duty, and they would therefore
-have the fullest excuse for not risking their lives in rescuing
-others, they have never hesitated to do so. When, a few winters ago,
-the <i>City of Newcastle</i> went ashore on one of the shoals near the
-lightship, and strained herself so badly that although she floated
-off, she soon filled and went down stern foremost, all hands,
-twenty-seven in number, were saved by the South Shoal crew and kept
-aboard of her over two weeks, until the story of the wreck was
-signaled to some passing vessel and the lighthouse tender took them
-off. This is the largest number saved at one time by the South Shoal,
-but the lightship crew have faced great danger on several other
-occasions.</p></div>
-
-<p>This is, perhaps, the extreme picture of lightship life, but apart
-from the prolonged isolation and continuous roughness of the water,
-the experiences<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span> of the men off Sandy Hook and elsewhere are not
-greatly removed from it, and no philanthropy is more worthy of support
-than that which seeks to mitigate the loneliness of these exiles by
-providing them with reading matter. The Lighthouse Board provides a
-small circulating library for these ships, and contributions of books
-and files of illustrated periodicals will be gratefully received and
-put to good use by the Superintendent of the Lighthouse Service in
-Washington.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_219">
-<img src="images/i_219.jpg" width="200" height="360" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE FOG-BELL.</p></div>
-
-<p>But there are times—and they occur very frequently in northern
-waters—when fogs which no light can penetrate envelop sea and coast,
-and that is the most dangerous of all times to an approaching ship.
-The only means by which a warning can be given, in such an emergency,
-is by sound. In many places bells are rung, but often the place to be
-avoided is so situated that the roar of the surf would drown a bell’s
-note, and then fog-horns are blown. These fog-horns are of a size so
-immense, and voices so stentorian, that it requires a steam engine to
-blow them, and they utter a booming, hollow blast, a dismal note as we
-hear it when we are safe on the land, but sweet to the anxious captain
-whose vessel is laboring through the gloom under close-reefed topsails,
-and uncertain of her exact position. One kind of these horns is very
-complicated in its structure, and screeches in a rough, broken blare,
-a note far-reaching beyond any smooth, whistling sound that could be
-made. This shriek is so hideous, so ear-splitting, when heard near at
-hand, that no name bad enough to express it could be found; so its
-inventors went to the other extreme, and called it a siren, after those
-most enchanting of sweet singers who tried to entice Ulysses out of his
-course. This name is opposite in a double sense, indeed, for the sirens
-of old lured sailors to wreck, while our siren hoarsely bids them keep
-off. Finally, buoys, which at first were simply tight casks, but now
-are usually made of boiler-iron, are anchored on small reefs, to which
-are hung bells, rung constantly by the tossing of their support; and on
-other reefs buoys are fixed having a hollow cap so arranged that when a
-big wave rushes over, it shuts in a body of air, under great and sudden
-pressure, which can only escape through a whistle in the top of the
-cap, uttering a long warning wail to tell its position.</p>
-
-<p>It is in such times as this that the pilot comes out strong.</p>
-
-<p>A pilot is a man who has made himself thoroughly acquainted with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
-certain waters where navigation is dangerous, and who is licensed
-by some proper authority, after training and examination, to direct
-vessels in safety in entering harbors or passing through other
-intricate places. A ship-captain may be an excellent navigator, but
-he is not expected to know every rock and sandbar crouching under the
-waves, and all the twistings and turnings of the entrance and channel
-of a foreign harbor, especially as these channels are subject to
-constant change. In this country, indeed, although coasting-vessels may
-refuse a pilot, the law will not permit captains coming from or bound
-to a foreign port to do so; and if any accident happens when no pilot
-is aboard the insurance money will not be paid, and the ship’s officers
-may be punished.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_220">
-<img src="images/i_220.jpg" width="600" height="185" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A SIREN RIGGED UPON A MERCHANT STEAMSHIP.</p></div>
-
-<p>Pilots, then, are important men and are able to charge very high prices
-for their services (generally rated according to the draft of the
-vessel), and their profession is so organized and guarded that not only
-must a man be thoroughly competent, but he must wait for a vacancy in
-the regular number before he will be admitted to their ranks.</p>
-
-<p>Their method of work is very exciting. A dozen or so together will
-form the crew of a trim, stanch schooner, provisioned for a fortnight
-or more, which can outsail anything but a racing yacht, and is built
-to ride safely through the highest seas. A few steamers are coming
-into use, but the procedure is much the same. You will now and then
-see one of these beautiful little vessels sailing up the quiet harbor,
-threading its way through the black steamers and sputtering tug-boats
-and great ships, as a shy and graceful girl walks among the guests at a
-lawn party, and you know from its air as well as the big number on its
-white mainsail that it is a pilot boat, even if it does not carry the
-regular pilot-flag, which in the United States is simply the “union” or
-starry canton of the ensign.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_221">
-<img src="images/i_221.jpg" width="425" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">BURNING A “FLARE” ON A PILOT-BOAT.</p></div>
-
-<p>But these fine schooners and the brave men they carry are rarely in
-port. Their time is spent far in the offing of the harbor, cruising
-back and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span> forth in wait for incoming ships, and the New York pilots
-often go two and three hundred miles out to sea, and in storms may
-be blown much farther away. Other pilot-boats are waiting also, and
-the lookout at the reeling mast-head must keep the very keenest watch
-upon the horizon. Suddenly he catches sight of a white speck which
-his practised eye tells him is a ship’s top-sails, or of a blur upon
-the sky that advertises a steamer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>’s approach. The schooner’s head is
-instantly turned toward it, and all the canvas is crowded on that she
-will bear, for away off at the right a second pilot-boat, well down, is
-also seen to be aiming at the same point and trying hard to win.</p>
-
-<p>The first pilots of New York harbor were stationed at Sandy Hook, and
-visited incoming vessels in whale-boats; and many a stately British
-frigate or colonial trader was forced to wait anxiously outside the
-bar, rolling and tossing in the sea-way, or tacking hither and yon,
-hoping for a glimpse of that tiny speck where flashing oars told of
-the coming pilot. It is in this way, as the late Mr. J. O. Davidson,
-the artist, who knew all about such things, told us in “St. Nicholas”
-(January, 1890), that many vessels are still met, off some of our
-smaller harbors, and at the mouth of the Mississippi River. There the
-waters of the great river pouring into the Gulf of Mexico through the
-Port Eads Jetties make a turbulent swell with foam-crested billows that
-roll the stoutest ship’s gunwale under, even in calm weather; yet the
-little whale-boats, swift and buoyant, dash out bravely in a race for
-the sail on the distant horizon, for there are two pilot-stations at
-the Jetties, and it is “first come first engaged.”</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes, on the other hand, it is the ship that looks for the
-pilot, cruising about with the code-letters P T flying from her
-signal-halyards in token of her need. She may even run past a
-pilot-boat in the night and get into danger without being aware of it.
-To prevent this, says Mr. Davidson, the pilots burn what is known as a
-“flare” or torch, consisting of a bunch of cotton or lamp-wick dipped
-in turpentine, on the end of a short handle. It burns with a brilliant
-flame, lighting up the sea for a great distance and throwing the sails
-and number of the pilot-boat into strong relief against the darkness.
-On a dark clear night, the reddish glare which the signal projects on
-the clouds looks like distant heat lightning.</p>
-
-<p>Having sighted his vessel, the pilot whose turn it is to go on duty
-hurries below and packs the valise which contains such things as he
-wishes to take home, for this is his method of going ashore; and when
-he has departed, if he is the last one of the pilot-crew, the little
-vessel returns herself to port in charge of the sailing-master, cook,
-and “boy,” to refit and take on a new set of men.</p>
-
-<p>The storm may be howling in the full force of the winter’s fury, and
-the waves running “mountain-high,” but the pilot must get aboard by
-some means. It is rough weather indeed when his mates cannot launch
-their yawl and row him to where he can climb up the stranger’s side
-with the aid of a friendly rope’s end.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_223">
-<img src="images/i_223.jpg" width="403" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A PILOT BOARDING A STEAMER.</p></div>
-
-<p>Yet frequently this is out of the question. Then a “whip” is rigged<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>
-beyond the end of a lee yard-arm, carrying a rope rove through a
-snatch-block, and having a noose at its end. The steamer slows her
-engines, or the ship heaves to, and the pilot-schooner, under perfect
-control, runs up under the lee of the big ship, as near as she dares
-in the gale. Then, just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span> at the right instant, a man on the ship’s
-yard hurls the rope, it is caught by the schooner, the pilot slips one
-leg through the bowline-noose, and a second afterward the schooner has
-swept on and he is being hoisted up to the yard-arm, but generally
-not in time to save himself a good ducking in the coaming of some big
-roller. Going on shipboard in this fashion is not favorable to an
-imposing effect; nevertheless, the pilot is welcomed by both crew and
-passengers, who admire his courage and trust his skill, but smile at
-the high hat beloved of all pilots.</p>
-
-<p>Now the pilot is master—stands ahead of the captain even—and his
-orders are absolute law. He inspects the vessel to form his opinion
-of how she will behave, and then goes to the wheel or stands where
-best he can give his orders to the steersman and to the men in the
-fore-chains heaving the sounding lead. He must never abandon his post,
-he must never lose his control of the ship, or make a mistake as to
-its position in respect to the lee-shore, or fail to be equal to every
-emergency. If it is too dark and foggy and stormy to see, he must feel;
-and if he cannot do this he must have the faculty of going right by
-intuition. To fail is to lose his reputation if not his life. This is
-what is expected of pilots, and this is what they actually do in a
-hundred cases, the full details of any one of which would make a long
-and thrilling tale of adventurous fighting for life.</p>
-
-<p>It is to help pilots and navigators of all sorts to avoid the perils
-that beset them that governments not only spend large sums in surveying
-coasts and harbors, publishing charts and descriptions, and maintaining
-lighthouses and lightships, but mark out bars and channels with
-floating guides, and their borders with shore-beacons and “ranges,” to
-form so many finger-posts for the right road. Were it not for these
-sign-posts no ship could safely enter any commercial harbor in the
-world; and it will be valuable to quote somewhat from an article, with
-capital illustrations, written for “St. Nicholas” (March, 1896) by an
-officer of the United States Navy, Lieut. John M. Ellicott, since it
-describes how the long, winding approaches to one of the greatest ports
-of the world are marked out by day and by night—I mean the harbor of
-New York.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Suppose, then, that we are on a big transatlantic steamer approaching
-the United States from Europe.... Having secured his pilot, it is the
-captain’s next aim to make a “land-fall”—that is to say, he wishes to
-come in sight of some well-known object on shore, which, being marked
-down on his chart, will show him just where he is and how he must
-steer to find the entrance to the harbor.</p>
-
-<p>A special lighthouse is usually the object sought, and in approaching
-New York harbor it is customary for steamers from Europe to first
-find, or sight, Fire Island Lighthouse. This is on a sandy island
-near the coast of Long Island. When, therefore, the liner steams
-in sight of Fire Island Light she hoists two signals, one of which
-tells her name and the other the welfare of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span> those on board. The
-operator then telegraphs to the ship’s agents in New York that she
-has been sighted, and that all on board are well or otherwise. [Other
-despatches go to the newspapers, who have observing stations and
-telegraph arrangements here and at Sandy Hook.]</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_225_1">
-<img src="images/i_225_1.jpg" width="600" height="165" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">DAY-MARKS IN NEW YORK HARBOR.</p></div>
-
-<p>The ship’s course is then laid to reach the most prominent object at
-the harbor entrance, in this case Sandy Hook Lightship. She is easily
-recognized. The course from this lightship to the harbor entrance
-is laid down on the chart “west-northwest, one quarter west,” and,
-steering this course, a group of three buoys is reached. One is
-a large “nun,” or cone-shaped, buoy, painted black and white in
-vertical stripes; another has a triangular framework built on it, and
-in the top of this framework is a bell which tolls mournfully as the
-buoy is rocked; while the third is surmounted by a big whistle....
-These mark the point where ocean ends and harbor begins, and can be
-found in fair weather or in fog by their color and shape, or noise.
-They are the mid-channel buoys at the entrance to Gedney Channel, the
-deep-water entrance to New York harbor. Here it may be noted that
-mid-channel buoys in all harbors in the United States are painted
-black and white in vertical stripes, and, being in mid-channel,
-should be passed close to by all deep-draft vessels. At this point
-the pilot takes charge.</p>
-
-<p>Ahead the water seems now to be dotted in the most indiscriminate
-manner with buoys and beacons, and on the shores around the harbor,
-far and near, there seem to be almost a dozen lighthouses. If,
-however, you watch the buoys as the pilot steers the ship between
-them, you will soon see that all those passed on the right-hand side
-are <i>red</i>, and all on the left are <i>black</i>. Where more than one
-channel runs through the same harbor, the different channels are
-marked by buoys of different shapes. Principal channels are marked by
-“nun” buoys, secondary channels by “can” buoys, and minor channels by
-“spar” buoys.</p>
-
-<div class="center">
-<table class="my90" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="buoy images">
-<tr>
-<td class="tdl vertb">
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_225_2">
-<img src="images/i_225_2.jpg" width="150" height="118" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">NUN BUOYS.</p></div>
-</td>
-
-<td class="tdl vertb">
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_225_3">
-<img src="images/i_225_3.jpg" width="150" height="100" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">CAN BUOYS.</p></div>
-</td>
-
-<td class="tdl vertb">
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_225_4">
-<img src="images/i_225_4.jpg" width="150" height="246" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SPAR BUOYS.</p></div>
-</td>
-</tr></table></div>
-
-<p>Gedney Channel is a short, dredged lane leading over the outer bar,
-or barrier of sand, which lies between harbor and ocean. Its buoys
-are lighted at night by electricity, through submarine cables, the
-red ones with red lights, the black ones with white lights. Moreover,
-a little lighthouse off to the left, known as Sandy Hook Beacon,
-has in its lamp a red sector which throws a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span> red beam just covering
-Gedney Channel. Thus this channel can be passed through in safety by
-night as well as by day. If it is night the pilot knows when he is
-through it by the change of color in Sandy Hook Beacon light from
-red to white. Then he looks away past that light to his left for
-two fixed white lights on the New Jersey shore and hillside, known
-as Point Comfort Beacon and Waackaack Beacon, for he knows that by
-keeping them in range, that is to say, in line with one another and
-himself, and by steering toward them he is in the main ship channel.
-By day the main ship channel buoys would guide him, as in Gedney
-Channel, but at night these buoys are not lighted.</p>
-
-<p>Only a short distance is now traversed when the ship comes to a point
-where two unseen channels meet. This is indicated by a buoy having
-a tall spindle, or “perch,” surmounted by a latticed square. From
-here, if she continues on her course, she will remain in the main
-ship-channel, which, although deeper, is a more circuitous route into
-port; so, if she does not draw too much water, she is turned somewhat
-to the right, and, leaving the buoy with the perch and square on her
-right, because it is red, she is steered between the buoys which mark
-Swash Channel. If it were night this channel would be revealed by two
-range-lights on the Staten Island shore and hillside, known as Elm
-Tree Beacon and New Dorp Beacon, both being steady-burning, white
-lights; but we are entering by daylight, and when half-way through
-Swash Channel we notice a buoy painted red and black in horizontal
-stripes. To this is given a wide berth by the pilot. It is an
-“obstruction” buoy marking a shoal spot or a wreck.</p></div>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_226">
-<img src="images/i_226.jpg" width="150" height="184" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">OBSTRUCTION BUOY.</p></div>
-
-<p>Channel buoys are all numbered in sequence from the sea inward, the
-red ones with even, and the black ones with odd numbers, and the
-larger ones are anchored with “mushrooms” while the smaller have
-“sinkers” of iron or stone. They are made of iron plates in water-tight
-compartments, so that if punctured by an over-running ship or some
-other accident, they will not be likely to sink. In harbors where ice
-forms in winter, large summer buoys are replaced in winter by a smaller
-sort less liable to be torn adrift. Buoys do go adrift, however, now
-and then, and sometimes take a voyage across the ocean or far down
-the coast before they can be found by the tenders of the Lighthouse
-Service, which is constantly looking after these and other marks.
-Lieutenant Ellicott tells us that all changes in the position of buoys
-or lightships, or the placing of new buoys to mark a change of channel,
-or an obstruction, are published promptly in pamphlets called “Notices
-to Mariners,” which are distributed as quickly as possible through well
-organized means of communication. A few years ago one of the largest of
-our handsome new cruisers was approaching New York harbor from the West
-Indies in a light fog. Sandy Hook Lightship had been found, the usual
-course laid for Gedney Channel, and the ship was steaming onward at
-full speed, her captain, having been inspector of that very lighthouse
-district but a short time before, feeling that he knew his way into
-that port better than the most experienced pilot. Presently,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span> however,
-he was startled by the alarming cry of <i>breakers ahead</i>! A large hotel
-also loomed up, and, as the ship was backed full speed astern, all
-hands realized that they had barely escaped running high and dry on
-Rockaway Beach. When the vessel got into port it was learned that Sandy
-Hook Lightship had been moved considerably from its old position, and
-that the notice of this change had failed to reach the captain of the
-cruiser before he sailed from the West Indies.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_227">
-<img src="images/i_227.jpg" width="400" height="234" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A WHISTLING BUOY, OUT OF COMMISSION.</p></div>
-
-<p>Shipwrecks still occur, however, in spite of lighthouses and sirens
-and buoys and coast-surveys; therefore we add to our precautions
-arrangements to help those cast away. Societies to save wrecked persons
-have existed, it is said, for many centuries in China, but in Europe
-they are hardly a hundred years old. The early humane societies, like
-that of Great Britain, placed life-boats and rescuing gear in certain
-shore towns, and organized crews, who promised to go out to the aid of
-any lost ship, and to take good care of the persons rescued.</p>
-
-<p>In America, however, our coasts are so extensive, and so much of the
-dangerous part of them is far away from villages, or even a farmhouse,
-that the government has been obliged to do whatever was necessary. Thus
-came about the Life Saving Service, which now has its stations close
-together along our whole sea-coast, and upon the great lakes, covering
-more than ten thousand miles in all.</p>
-
-<p>Each of these stations is a snug house on the beach, tenanted by a
-keeper and six men, all of whom are chosen for their skill in swimming,
-and in handling a boat in the surf—something every man who “follows the
-sea” cannot do successfully. Beaching a boat through surf is an art.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_228">
-<img src="images/i_228.jpg" width="300" height="488" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">PATROLMEN EXCHANGING THEIR CHECKS.</p></div>
-
-<p>During all the season, from October till May, two men from each station
-are incessantly patrolling the beach at night, each walking until he
-meets the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span> patrolman from the next station. No matter how foul the
-weather, these watchmen are out until daylight looking for disasters.
-The moment they discover a vessel ashore, or likely to become disabled,
-they summon their companions and hasten to launch their boat. These
-boats are of two kinds. On the lakes and on the steep Pacific coast
-is used the very heavy English life-boat, fitted with masts and sails
-if necessary, which a steam tug is required to tow to the scene of
-the wreck, unless it is close in shore. But upon our flat, sandy
-Atlantic beaches only a lighter kind of surf-boat, made of cedar,
-can be handled. This is built with air-cases at each end and under
-the thwarts, so that it cannot sink. The station men drag it on its
-low wagon to the scene of its use, unless horses are to be had, and
-when it is launched they sit at the six oars, each with his cork belt
-buckled around him, and his eye fixed on the steersman, who stands in
-the stern, ready to obey his slightest motion of command, for rowing
-through the angry waves that dash themselves on a storm-beaten beach
-is a matter requiring extraordinary skill and strength. Then, when the
-vessel is reached, comes another struggle to avoid being struck and
-crushed by the plunging ship, or the broken spars and rigging pounding
-about the hull. But skill and caution generally enable the crew to
-rescue the unfortunate castaways one by one, though frequently several
-trips must be made, in each one of which every surfman risks his life,
-and in many a sad case loses it; yet there is no lack of men for the
-service.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_229">
-<img src="images/i_229.jpg" width="450" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SAVING A SAILOR BY MEANS OF THE BREECHES-BUOY.</p></div>
-
-<p>It is a common occurrence, however, that the sea will run so high that
-no boat could possibly be launched. Then the only possibility of rescue
-for the crew is by means of a line which shall bridge the space between
-the ship and the land before the hull falls to pieces. We read in old
-tales of wrecks<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span> of how some brave seaman would tie a light line around
-his waist, and dare the dreadful waves, and the more dreadful undertow,
-to save his comrades. If he got safely upon the beach, he drew a hawser
-on shore and made it fast. Now we do not ask this; but with a small
-cannon made for the purpose, a strong cord attached to a cannon-ball is
-fired over the ship, even though it be several hundred yards distant.
-Seizing this line as it falls across their vessel, the imperiled
-sailors haul to themselves a larger line, called a “whip,” which they
-fasten in a tackle-block in such a way that a still heavier cable can
-be stretched between the wreck and the land and made fast.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Then by means of a small side-line and pulleys a double canvas bag,
-shaped like a pair of knee-breeches, is sent back and forth between
-the ship and the shore, bringing a man each time, until all are
-saved. Should there be many persons on board, though, and great haste
-necessary, instead of the breeches-buoy a small covered metallic boat,
-called the life-car, is sent out, into which several persons may get
-at once. These varied means are so skilfully employed, that now hardly
-one in two hundred is lost of those whose lives are endangered on the
-American coasts.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_230">
-<img src="images/i_230.jpg" width="500" height="331" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE SELF-RIGHTING LIFE-BOAT.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">FISHING AND OTHER MARINE INDUSTRIES</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_231.jpg" width="75" height="74" alt="ornate capital T" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">The</span> grandest sea-chase is that after the whale—the most gigantic of
-mammals, the most extraordinary in appearance and habits, and the most
-valuable to man, for the capture of one may mean ten times as much
-reward as the ivory of an elephant or the rarest otter-skin would
-afford, and perhaps a hundred times as much, if ambergris be found
-within its body.</p>
-
-<p>Men have had the hardihood to chase these huge and often savage
-creatures in their own turbulent element, and with the most primitive
-weapons, ever since the art of navigation was acquired.</p>
-
-<p>The Japanese and other Asiatics of the western shore of the North
-Pacific have dared to go out in rowboats and attack the largest
-whales since the origin of their traditions, and they had a method of
-entangling these leviathans in nets, which must have produced exciting
-scenes, as the monster struggled amid the bloody turmoil of waters to
-free himself from the innumerable connected cords that embarrassed his
-movements, rather than subdued his strength, until his life ebbed away
-through a hundred wounds.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_232">
-<img src="images/i_232.jpg" width="403" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">AN OLD WHALER.</p></div>
-
-<p>On the Alaskan coast, and southward as far as Oregon, the Indians, and
-especially those of the Queen Charlotte Islands and the coasts of the
-Strait of Juan de Fuca, were accustomed, hundreds, perhaps thousands
-of years ago, to go far away into the ocean in their dug-out canoes,
-searching for and spearing the whales with lances made of flint or
-bone, having detachable barbed heads. These were attached to shafts by
-rawhide lines, and to the shafts were attached buoys of large inflated
-bladders. When the animal was struck, the heavy pole would drive the
-lancehead through the skin and then fall off. The barbs would not only
-hold the instrument there, but cause it to work deeper and deeper, and
-the whale, darting away or diving, would be so impeded by dragging
-the poles and buoys after him, that he would soon return to receive
-other darts, and so, between loss of blood and exhaustion, would
-ultimately be killed. It is extremely interesting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span> to read the stories,
-gathered by early travelers from the lips of the Indians,—old Haidas
-or Makahs are living yet who have taken part in such nerve-testing
-canoe-chases,—of their fights with this gigantic foe far from land, and
-their hair’s-breadth escapes; and it is not strange that many quaint
-ceremonies were devised to placate the waters and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span> power of the
-whale-god in advance, and to honor the sea-hunters when they returned.</p>
-
-<p>The Greenlanders and Eastern Eskimos do not seem to have been able
-in their small skin boats to conquer the largest sort of whales, but
-the smaller ones, such as the white whale, fell to their spears in a
-similar way; and they took great pains to secure any dead or stranded
-cetacean that came within their reach, the bones of which were as
-valuable to them, in the absence of wood, as were the flesh, oil, and
-sinews.</p>
-
-<p>The history of European whaling begins with the excursions of the
-Basques, who, as long ago at least as the tenth century, were
-accustomed to go out from their shore-towns in search of the southern
-right whale which frequents the Bay of Biscay and its offing. Doubtless
-their boats were small, half-decked, lugger-rigged “shyppes,” carrying
-ten to fifteen men, and looking much like many of the Channel fishermen
-of to-day. This “fishery” supplied all Europe during the Middle Ages
-with the whalebone and oil which were among the luxuries of the rich at
-that time; but by the time the sixteenth century had arrived, whales
-had become so scarce in the Eastern Atlantic—where now they are almost
-extinct—that this industry must have ceased had not the Cabots shown
-the way to Newfoundland, to whose shores the Basques at once extended
-their voyages with excellent results, for in those days whales were
-commonly seen all along the American shore of the North Atlantic. But
-this remote fishery would have been too precarious and costly to be
-of great consequence had it not been for the early efforts, related
-in Chapter V, to find a passage to the East north of the continents.
-The earliest of these failed, but they brought back reports that the
-edge of the frozen sea abounded in whales, and men rushed into this
-newly discovered field of wealth, as, centuries later, they abandoned
-everything in headlong haste to go to the gold-fields of California,
-Australia, South Africa or the Yukon Valley.</p>
-
-<p>The English did their best to monopolize the whale fishery at once, but
-the Dutch sent war-vessels, and in a fleet action almost at the edge of
-the ice in 1618 the Dutch conquered and opened the seas to all comers,
-while separate districts on the coast of Spitzbergen were assigned to
-each nationality. The English interest in the fishery declined, but the
-Dutch increased their attention to it, taking over one thousand whales
-each year. “About 1680,” we read, “they had two hundred and sixty
-vessels and fourteen thousand seamen employed. Their fishery continued
-to flourish on almost as extensive a scale until 1770, when it began
-to decline, and finally, owing to the war, came to an end before the
-end of the century.” The Germans were always associated with them, and
-continued to send a whaling fleet to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span> Barentz Sea and the Jan Mayen
-waters until 1873. Meanwhile the Greenland whaling-grounds had begun to
-attract British whalemen, followed by the Danes in the early part of
-the last century; then this local industry fell off, but was revived
-about 1800, remained prosperous for many years, and is still the
-support of Peterhead and a few other Scotch ports.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_234">
-<img src="images/i_234.jpg" width="426" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">WHALERS TRYING OIL OUT OF BLUBBER.</p></div>
-
-<p>The abundance of whales near the coast was one of the prime
-inducements<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span> held out to colonists by North America, where whales
-often appeared close to the shore, or in harbors, as occasionally they
-do yet. Here, at first, whale-fishing was pursued wholly in rowboats
-launched from the beach. Many shore towns owned whaleboats and gear,
-each with its trained crew, and some kept a regular lookout, day by
-day, whose duty it was promptly to announce the appearance of any whale
-in the offing. Such was the case at Southampton, Long Island, for many
-years, and even now, occasionally, the town-crew there rushes away
-through the breakers after some stray visitor amid the excitement of
-the whole neighborhood, but this happens only at intervals of several
-years.</p>
-
-<p>Before the end of the seventeenth century, however, the people of
-Nantucket Island were wont to cruise about the neighboring ocean for
-right whales, their voyage lasting six weeks or so as a rule, and
-now and then they would pick up a sperm whale. By the middle of the
-eighteenth century, however, sperm whaling was no longer profitable
-in the Northern Atlantic, while the Greenland grounds were overrun by
-European ships. American fishermen therefore turned their attention to
-the West, and for many years confined themselves mainly to catching the
-sperm whale, finding at first their best “grounds” in the south-middle
-Pacific. When the War of Independence came on, Nantucket was the
-leading whaling-port of the country, but all the New England towns
-were more or less engaged, and no less than three hundred and sixty
-vessels, large and small, were out. The Revolutionary War nearly
-destroyed the industry, and before it could well revive, the War of
-1812 again subjected the whaling-ships to capture by English privateers
-and men-of-war all over the world. After that, however, they spread
-all over the Southern seas, and between 1840 and 1850 more than seven
-hundred were flying the flag of the United States.</p>
-
-<p>The whaling vessels were large, stanch craft, usually bark-rigged,
-distinguished by their old-fashioned shape, weather-stained, smoky
-appearance, enormous boats swinging from end to end of the ship from
-lofty davits, and try-works forward. They kept longer than any one
-else many relics of rigging, custom, and language, belonging to the
-seamanship of earlier generations; and no sea-peril could daunt either
-the vessel or its crew. They would sail on voyages lasting two or
-three years, and sometimes would circumnavigate the globe and return
-without having touched at a port. As a rule, however, they would gain
-part of a cargo, and then go to some port, ship it to London or New
-York, and refit for a new voyage. The profits of a trip were thus very
-great sometimes, but other trips were attended only by expense and
-misfortune. </p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_236">
-<img src="images/i_236.jpg" width="600" height="255" alt="" />
-<p><span class="smallest sans">DRAWN BY W. TABER.</span></p>
-
-<p class="caption">A RACE FOR A WHALE.</p></div>
-
-<p>The capture of whales in those days had more danger if not more
-excitement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span> than now, for the only method was by rowing after them,
-helped by the sails, in the 28-foot, double-ended rowboats made for the
-purpose (of which every vessel carried six or eight), and sinking into
-their vitals darts and lances until they died. They were then towed
-to the vessel’s side, held by tackle from the yard-arms in a suitable
-position, and cut up. The oil in early days was packed in casks, but
-later has been run into iron tanks built into the hold, after having
-been tried out of the blubber in the great caldrons set in brick on the
-forward deck, which gave a whaler so peculiar an appearance, at all
-times, and would lead any one to suppose her on fire while the process
-of trying-out was going on, and the great volumes of black smoke caused
-by the use of whale-fat and waste as fuel were drifting to leeward.</p>
-
-<p>One of the best accounts of a chase published is that by the late
-Temple Brown, of the United States Fish Commission, in an article in
-“The Century” for February, 1893, from which I am permitted to make an
-extract:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>While cruising on the coast of New Zealand, one day about 11.30
-<span class="smcap">A. M.</span>, the lookout at the main hailed the deck with: “Thar
-sh’ b-l-o-w-s! Thar sh’ b-l-o-w-s! Blows! B-l-o-w-s!”</p>
-
-<p>“Where away?” promptly responded the officer of the deck.</p>
-
-<p>“Four points off the lee bow! Blows sperm-whales! Blows! Blows!” came
-from aloft.</p>
-
-<p>“How far off?” shouted the captain, roused out of his cabin by the
-alarm, as his head and shoulders appeared above deck. “Where are they
-heading?” he continued, as he went up the rigging on all-fours.</p>
-
-<p>“Blows about two miles and a half off, sir,” replied Mr. Braxton,
-the mate, looking off the lee-bow with his glasses, “and coming to
-windward, I believe.”</p>
-
-<p>“Call all hands!” said the captain. “Haul up the mainsail, and back
-your main-yards. Hurry up there! Get your boats ready, Mr. Braxton!”</p>
-
-<p>At the first alarm the men came swarming up the companionway of the
-forecastle, divesting themselves of superfluous articles of clothing,
-and scattering them indiscriminately about the deck. Rolling up
-their trousers, and girding their loins with their leather belts,
-taking a double reef until supper-time, they flitted nervously
-here and there in their bare legs and feet, observing every order
-with the greatest alacrity, and holding themselves in readiness to
-go over the side of the vessel at the word of command. There is
-a certain order, systematic action, or red tape, observed on all
-first-class whaling-vessels, however imperfectly disciplined some of
-the boat-crews may be. The captain indicates the boats he wishes to
-attack the whales; the boat-header (an officer) and the boat-steerer
-(the harpooner) take their proper positions in the boat, the former
-at the stern and the latter at the bow, while suspended in the
-davits. At the proper moment the davit-tackles are run out by men on
-deck, and the boats drop with a lively splash; the sprightly oarsmen
-meantime leap the ship’s rail, and, swinging themselves down the
-side of the vessel, tumble promiscuously into the boats just about
-the time the latter strike the water. Although it may be said that
-there is a general scramble, there is not the least confusion. Every
-person and thing has the proper place assigned to it in a whaleboat;
-the officer has full command, but he is subject to the orders of the
-captain, who signals his instructions from the ship, usually by means
-of the light sails. The manner of going on to a whale, the number of
-men and their positions in the boat, and the kind of instruments and
-the manner of using them, have been perpetuated in this fishery for
-more than two centuries.</p>
-
-<p>“Clear away the larboard and bow boats!” shouted the captain. “Get in
-ahead of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span> whales, Mr. Braxton, if you can. Here, cook, you and
-cooper lend a hand there with them davy-taycles. Are you ready? Hoist
-and swing your boats.”</p>
-
-<p>Down went the larboard boat and the bow boat almost simultaneously.</p>
-
-<p>“Shove off! Up sail! Out oars! Pull ahead!” were the orders from
-Mr. Braxton, the officer of the larboard boat, in rapid succession.
-“Let’s get clear of the ship. Come, bear a hand with that sail, do,”
-he added, coaxingly, with his eye on the third mate’s boat. “Don’t
-let ’em get in ahead of us.”</p>
-
-<p>“All right, sir; here you go, sheet,” replied Vera, the harpooner,
-a well-developed and intelligent American-Portuguese, with his
-accustomed good spirits.</p>
-
-<p>Hastily laying aside his paddle, like a tiger couchant, with eager
-eyes upon his prey, he picked up his harpoon, and stood erect, his
-tall, muscular frame swaying above the head of the boat. He placed
-his thigh in the clumsy-cleat,—a contrivance to steady the harpooner
-against the motions of the waves,— and with his long, springy
-arms turned and balanced the harpoon-pole previous to poising the
-instrument in the air.... Under the motive power of sail and paddle
-the space between the boat and whale was rapidly diminishing, and
-apparently they would soon come into collision. The enormous head
-of the cetacean, as it plowed a wide furrow in the ocean, and the
-tall column of vapor rising from the blow-holes, as it spouted ten
-or twelve feet in the air, were to be seen right ahead; the expired
-air, as it rushed like steam from a valve, could be heard near by;
-the bunch of the neck and the hump were plainly visible as they rose
-and fell with the swell of the waves; and the terrible commotion of
-the troubled waters, fanned by the gigantic flukes, left a swath of
-foaming and dancing waves clearly outlined upon the surface of the
-sea....</p>
-
-<p>Mr. Braxton laid the boat off gracefully to starboard, and the
-mastodonic head of a genuine spermaceti whale loomed up on our port
-bow. The junk was seamed and scarred with many a wound received in
-fierce and angry struggles for supremacy with individuals of its own
-species, or perhaps with the kraken; the foaming waters ran up and
-down the great shining black head, exposing from time to time the
-long, rakish under-jaw; but what small eyes!</p>
-
-<p>“Now!” shouted the officer, as if Vera was a half-mile off, instead
-of about twenty-five feet. “Give him some, boy! Give him—!” But his
-well-trained and faithful harpooner had already darted the harpoon
-into the glistening black skin just abaft the fin; the boat was
-enveloped in a foam-cloud—the “white water” of the whalemen, stirred
-up by the tremendous flukes of the whale.</p>
-
-<p>“Stern all!” shouted the officer; and the boat was quickly propelled
-backward by the oarsmen, to clear it from the whale. “Are you fast,
-boy?”</p>
-
-<p>“Fust iron in, sir; can’t tell second,” replied Vera; but the
-zip-zip-zip of the line as it fairly leaped from the tub and went
-spinning round the loggerhead and through the chocks, sending up
-a cloud of smoke produced by friction, indicated the presence of
-healthy game.</p>
-
-<p>“Wet line! wet line!” shouted Mr. Braxton, as he went forward to kill
-the whale, and Vera came aft to steer the boat, unstepping the mast
-on his way; for all whales are now struck under sail. The whale,
-however, soon turned flukes, and went head first to the depths below.
-Meantime, the other whales had taken the alarm, and with their noses
-in the air, were showing a “clean pair of heels” to windward.</p>
-
-<p>The boat lay by awaiting the “rising” of the cetacean. Twenty minutes
-passed, twenty-five, stroke-oarsman began to feel hungry; thirty,
-thirty-five, and still the line was either slowly running out or
-taut; but soon it began to slacken. “Haul line! haul line!” said
-the officer, peering into the water. “He’s stopped.” The line was
-retrieved as fast as possible and carefully laid in loose coils on
-the after platform. “Haul line, he’s coming! Coil line clear, Vera!”
-said Mr. Braxton, shading his eyes with his hand and looking over the
-gunwale at an immense opaque spot beginning to outline itself in the
-depths below.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_239">
-<img src="images/i_239.jpg" width="430" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption"><span class="smallest sans">DRAWN BY W. TABER.</span><span class="smallest sans add4em"> ENGRAVED BY J. W. EVANS.</span><br />
-FAST TO A WHALE.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="blockquote"><p>“Look out! Here he comes! Stern all! Look out for whale!”</p>
-
-<p>But the mate’s injunctions were received too late. The whale, fairly
-out of breath, came up with a bound and a puff, scattering the water
-in all directions, and catching the keel of the boat on the bunch of
-its neck. The boat bounded from this part of the whale’s anatomy to the
-hump, and, careening to starboard, shot the crew first on the whale’s
-side and then into the water. The stroke-oarsman now began to feel
-wet. The whale, terrified beyond measure by the tickling sensation of
-the little thirty-foot boat creeping down its back, caught the frail
-cedar craft on one corner of its flukes, and tossed it gracefully, but
-perhaps not intentionally, into the air, as one would play with a light
-rubber ball. As the boat descended, with one tremendous “side wipe” of
-the mighty caudal fin, and with a terrible crash that was heard on the
-ship nearly two miles away, the whale smashed it into kindling-wood.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_240">
-<img src="images/i_240.jpg" width="450" height="326" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A WHALE-BOAT CUT IN TWO.</p></div>
-
-<p>This is only one of the exciting tales Mr. Brown has to tell, and the
-history of whaling in every country could add many more. He tells us
-that approaching a whale at all times is like going into battle, and
-says that many of the deeds remembered by old hands were purely heroic,
-since the danger might have been avoided by declining to attack the
-animal under the especially hazardous conditions that often present
-themselves.</p>
-
-<p>The persecution suffered by whales of all kinds in all parts of the
-world made the more valuable kinds so scarce by the middle of the
-present century that many voyages were almost fruitless, not only by
-reason of small catches, but because the substitutes invented for
-whalebone, and the constantly increasing use of mineral oils had
-lowered prices to an almost ruinous level. The American fleets suffered
-with the rest, until during the Civil War they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span> were nearly swept from
-the seas by the ravages of the <i>Shenandoah</i> and other Confederate
-privateers.</p>
-
-<p>Since then there has been only a partial revival, accompanied by a good
-many changes. A few Scotch and German whalers still go to the northern
-seas, working in the ice, and some American vessels from the Eastern
-States, and a greater number from California search the Pacific and
-the waters off Alaska. All or nearly all of these whalers are provided
-with steam-propellers, having an arrangement by which they can lift the
-screw out of water and use their sails for ordinary purposes. Many of
-them chase with a steam-launch instead of the old-fashioned whaleboats,
-and save their men the back-straining labor of towing a prize perhaps
-two or three miles to the ship. In place of the hand harpoon they have
-several forms of swivel-guns and shoulder-guns discharging harpoons and
-explosive darts by gunpowder, so that a large share of the danger as
-well as the labor is saved to modern whalemen, who are also much better
-housed and fed in their large iron steamships than those used to be who
-wrestled with scurvy in the grim old hulks of half a century ago.</p>
-
-<p>The ships that go up through Davis Straits now frequently winter
-there, in order to be on hand in May to meet the whales that appear in
-the first open water, to which the men drag their boats over the ice
-between their ships and the first open channels. For the same purpose
-many vessels of the American fleet are accustomed to pass the winter in
-company under the shelter of islands near the mouth of the Mackenzie
-River. Here they have a rendezvous where buildings have been erected
-and means for social comfort have been established, such as billiard
-tables, books, etc. These western vessels do not force their way into
-and through the ice, as do those among the eastern archipelagoes,
-but operate in comparatively open water, as long as it lasts, along
-the edge of the paleocrystic ice. Delaying the departure of those
-who mean to return to the Pacific and home until the last moment, it
-occasionally happens that some are caught and frozen in. These are
-usually destroyed, but thus far their crews have managed to escape
-either to more fortunate vessels or to the shore, where, at Point
-Barrow, the government has built and keeps furnished a strong house,
-with stores, fuel, and provisions, as a refuge for shipwrecked mariners.</p>
-
-<p>Walrus-hunting is not much followed nowadays by civilized seamen,
-though the animal is still of great value to the Eskimo and Siberians.
-It has become very scarce in easily accessible waters, but is
-occasionally taken by whalers, who find a market for the ivory of its
-tusks.</p>
-
-<p>Sealing is an industry which still claims considerable attention from
-the Scandinavians and Scotchmen who go to the coasts and waters about
-Spitzbergen,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span> Jan Mayen, and Greenland, as well as to nearer resorts,
-in pursuit of several species yielding oil and valuable hides; and in
-the North Pacific the pursuit of the fur seal still occupies many small
-vessels, but seems likely to come soon to an end. Antarctic seals are
-practically extinct.</p>
-
-<p>The industry of fishing is probably one of the oldest in the world,
-and it remains among the most important, for the fisheries not only
-furnish a vast amount of nutritious and pleasant, yet remarkably cheap,
-food, but many other things useful to mankind. Hence it is not strange
-to find that in all the early reports of the discovery of new lands
-and waters that followed one another so rapidly from the fourteenth to
-the eighteenth centuries, the fish and other sea-animals to be found
-were always given a prominent place in the list of valuable assets
-pertaining to each locality. Even the Spaniards and Portuguese, in
-their insane rush for gold and silver, to the neglect and ruin of
-everything else, had to pay some little attention to fishing and allied
-industries in both the East and West Indies; while in the case of the
-exploitations of new regions by the calmer, more prudent people of
-western Europe—the British, French, Dutch and Scandinavians,—the value
-of the harvest of the sea was really more in view, at first, than that
-of the land, at least when they began to visit and colonize North
-America. Take, as an example, the history of St. Pierre, Miquelon, and
-the others that form a group of islets in the Gulf of Newfoundland,
-half way between Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. Mr. S. G.
-W. Benjamin, in whose “Cruise of the <i>Alice May</i>” you may find many
-interesting and picturesque materials for an account of them, tells
-us a French settlement was begun on St. Pierre as early as 1604, and
-that tradition says the islands were resorted to by the Basques two
-centuries before that, as is very likely true.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>In 1713 the colony numbered three thousand souls, and had become a
-very important fishing port. In that very year St. Pierre was ceded
-to Great Britain, together with Newfoundland, the French being merely
-allowed permission to dry their fish on the adjacent shores. But when
-the victory of Wolfe resulted in the loss of Canada to France, she
-was once more awarded this little group of isles lying off Fortune
-Bay, to serve as a depot for her fishermen. The French now gave
-themselves in earnest to developing the cod-fisheries, determined,
-apparently, that what they had lost on land should be made up by the
-sea. In twelve years the average exportation of fish amounted to six
-thousand quintals, giving employment to over two hundred smacks,
-sailed by eight thousand seamen. The English recaptured the isles
-in 1778, destroyed all the stages and store-houses, and forced the
-inhabitants to go into exile. The peace of Versailles restored St.
-Pierre to France in 1783, and the fugitives returned to the island
-at the royal expense. The fisheries now became more prosperous than
-ever, when the war of ’93 once more brought the English fleets to
-St. Pierre. Again the inhabitants were forced to fly. By the peace
-of Amiens, in 1802, France regained possession of this singularly
-evanescent possession, and lost it the following year, when the town
-was destroyed. In 1816 St. Pierre and Miquelon were finally re-ceded
-to France, in whose power they have ever since remained.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_243">
-<img src="images/i_243.jpg" width="486" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">CURING FISH AT ST. PIERRE.</p></div>
-
-<p>As these islands were of no use to any one for any other purpose, all
-this struggle for their possession was in order to retain the privilege
-and naval control of fishing in those waters. The French government has
-carefully fostered this interest ever since, and now the islands not
-only have a settled population of several thousand, but at the height
-of the season sometimes as many as ten thousand strangers (sailors and
-fishermen) congregate at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span> the principal port, St. Pierre, which is one
-of the most important centers in the world for the marketing, curing,
-and export of sea-caught fish.</p>
-
-<p>Of all waters those of the North Atlantic seem to excel in useful
-fishes; from the oil-shark hand-lining off the coast of Lapland, or the
-sardine-catching of Spain, to Yankee sword-fishing, this ocean is alive
-with fish and fishermen, on both sides and at all seasons of the year.</p>
-
-<p>The whole coast of Norway supports this industry, especially around the
-far northern Lafoden Islands. The North Sea, shallow and cold, is the
-home of many valuable species that are sought by extensive fleets from
-Denmark, Holland, and the north of France, while thousands of British
-sailors make a living along their own eastern coasts and among the
-islands north of Scotland; but the waters on all sides of the British
-Isles are fishing waters, especially the English and Irish channels
-and the western lochs of Scotland; the herring-catch alone is worth
-eight and a half millions of dollars a year, while Great Britain’s
-mackerel-catch amounts to two millions, and her share of the codfishery
-to another two millions. Nearly half of all the products of British
-fisheries are obtained by the use of the beam-trawl—a huge dredge-like
-bag-net, handled and towed by steamers in pretty deep water, which
-scoops in everything near the bottom, where the most desirable
-sea-fishes stay. Among the prizes are the turbot and sole—toothsome and
-valuable species not known along American shores.</p>
-
-<p>More southerly are the profitable fisheries for pilchards, sprats, and
-especially sardines—little fishes taken in vast numbers and canned or
-preserved in various ways. The abundance of sardines, a recent writer
-tells us, may be inferred from the fact that the Spanish fishermen
-take annually about one hundred thousand tons of these little fishes,
-having a value of from $400,000 to $600,000. A peculiar method of
-capturing the sardines at night prevails in the Adriatic. The location
-of the shoals of fish is literally felt out by a light sounding-line,
-and by means of the attraction of a fire of resinous pine the fish are
-slowly coaxed into some creek or estuary and surrounded with a seine.
-The demand for wood for use in this and other night fisheries causes a
-serious drain on the neighboring pine-forests.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>great</i> fishery of the Mediterranean, however, is that for
-tunnies—huge fishes allied to mackerel, sometimes weighing several
-hundredweight, and regarded in America as poor food. They have been
-taken by means of pounds and strong enclosing nets ever since classical
-antiquity, and preserved tunny flesh is still popular in Spain, Italy,
-and North Africa, while the same fish is the object of one of the
-principal sea-industries of Japan.</p>
-
-<p>But important as are the catching, preserving, and utilization of
-these and many other European fishes, they are far outranked by the
-marine fisheries<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span> for the cod and its relatives, the halibut, haddock,
-hake, etc., in waters about Newfoundland, Labrador, and Iceland, where
-also great quantities of mackerel, herring, and other food fishes
-are regularly obtained. The principal grounds are on the Banks of
-Newfoundland, which have been resorted to for more than three hundred
-years by men from both continents.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_245">
-<img src="images/i_245.jpg" width="483" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">HAND-LINE FISHING ON THE GRAND BANKS.</p></div>
-
-<p>The Banks of Newfoundland are a series of shoals—submerged islands,
-in fact—which lie off the northeastern coast of America from Cape Cod
-to the farther end of Newfoundland. The shallowness of the water over
-them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span> makes them advantageous places for fishing, because many of the
-species caught remain near the bottom, and in deep water are therefore
-beyond convenient reach. It is possible, also, to anchor there—often a
-necessity.</p>
-
-<p>But just here are presented some of the worst perils to which fishermen
-are exposed. Nowhere are old ocean’s storms worse than on these Banks,
-where the sand is sometimes stirred five hundred feet below the
-surface. The best fishing comes in winter—the season of the heaviest
-gales. The vessels must anchor close together, too, for the areas of
-good fishing are small, and if one breaks its hawser, or the anchor
-drags, there is great danger of drifting afoul of some neighbor, which
-is likely to end in the destruction of both. Then there is ever present
-the danger, in these latitudes of almost ceaseless fog, of being run
-down by the transatlantic steamers, in whose track the fishing fleets
-must anchor. The skipper keeps his bell tolling, or a great horn
-blowing, but if a steamer comes down the wind her lookout will hardly
-be able to hear it before it is too late to stop or change the course
-of the monster rushing at full speed through the thickness of mist and
-flying spray. “Before anything can be done the relentless iron prow
-cuts into the schooner, which for a moment quivers and then disappears
-into the depths.... One of these great iron ships might cut the bows
-off a fishing schooner of sixty or eighty tons and not, perhaps,
-experience a sufficient shock to alarm the passengers sleeping calmly
-in their staterooms.”</p>
-
-<p>The vessels which go upon this perilous quest are the stanchest,
-swiftest, and withal handsomest little vessels that sail our seas.
-Their rig is adapted to this purpose, and spreads almost as much canvas
-as a racing-yacht, which, in fact, on this side of the Atlantic has
-been modeled from Banks fishermen. The best of them probably are those
-hailing from Gloucester, Mass., and these are never used for any other
-purpose.</p>
-
-<p>The old-fashioned hand-line fishing, such as still holds a place in the
-mackerel fisheries—although even there it has given way in most vessels
-to purse-netting,—is no longer practised in the American codfishery,
-which now uses the trawl-line altogether, by which the men have added
-to the hardship and danger of their adventurous life as well as to its
-profits.</p>
-
-<p>This trawl is not a huge dredge as is the beam-trawl of the North
-Sea fishermen, from which it has unfortunately copied its name, but
-is a strong rope between three and four hundred feet long, having at
-each end an anchor and a flag-buoy. It is so arranged that when it is
-stretched out and anchored the line will be several fathoms beneath the
-surface. To this line, at intervals of six feet or so, are hung short
-lines, each carrying a stout hook. When the fishing-ground has been
-reached, the captain anchors his vessel, or, if the weather permits, he
-sails gently to and fro. Previously, six<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span> trawls have been baited with
-clams brought from home, and one put in each of the six small boats
-which the vessel carries. Two men now put off in each of these boats
-and anchor the trawls at convenient distances from each other, in such
-a way that the trawl-line, with its fringe of hooks, shall be stretched
-taut and at the proper depth. How long they stay down depends on the
-weather—five or six hours, or from evening until morning, is the usual
-period. Then the men go out, and taking up the anchors at one end, haul
-each trawl into the boat, coiling it in the bottom and taking off the
-hooks each captive fish as fast as they come to it.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_247">
-<img src="images/i_247.jpg" width="600" height="595" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A FISHING SCHOONER “HOVE TO” IN A GALE ON THE BANKS.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Simple as this sounds, it is terribly hard work. The trawls are heavy
-and stiff, and armed with dangerously sharp hooks. The busiest season
-is midwinter, and no dread of cold or danger must stop the fisherman,
-who boldly ventures in his little dory into the teeth of a howling
-snow-storm and fast increasing gale, piling the water “mountain-high”
-about him and encasing his body in a sheet of icy spray; this must
-he do, in spite of discomfort and the imminent risk of death, if he
-would save from destruction his valuable trawls and the booty they may
-have hooked for him. A fine day on the Banks of Newfoundland is a rare
-thing; fog and snow and icy gales are the rule, and only the boldest
-courage, endurance, and skill will enable a man to resist that ocean
-and wrest from it his self-support. A vivid picture of the hardships
-and dangers of fishing on the Banks is to be found in Rudyard Kipling’s
-story, “Captains Courageous.”</p>
-
-<p>The intrepid and skilful voyages of our whalers and fishermen, daring
-every fatigue and danger in the open sea, have been schools for the
-best seamen of the world. Every nation is glad to draw these sailors
-into their navies, and it is they who make the bravest yet most
-cautious captains of our merchant marine, showing to their comrades
-and to landsmen splendid examples of heroism and fortitude. <i>This</i> is
-the schooling I meant when I said that in its industries we get not
-only food, but formation of character, from old Ocean,—and this is the
-highest result attainable from either land or sea.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_248">
-<img src="images/i_248.jpg" width="550" height="217" alt="shipwreck" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">THE PLANTS OF THE SEA AND THEIR USES</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_249.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="ornate capital T" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">The</span> ocean was the home of the first living thing, either plant or
-animal, that appeared on our planet; seaweeds and salt-water animals
-are found in much older rocks than any that contain the fossils of land
-life. Moreover, though called a “wide waste of waters,” and seeming a
-complete desert as we gaze upon its restless surface on a dull morning,
-there is a greater number of animals and plants by count, and quite
-as large a variety, under the waves as above them, and the bottom of
-the sea—at all events near its margin—is more populous than any bit of
-woods you ever saw.</p>
-
-<p>There exists in our ponds and ditches a race of plants so minute
-that it requires a powerful microscope to examine them. Under this
-instrument it is seen that they have delicate, flinty shells or armor,
-which is of a great variety of forms,—coiled, globular, boat-shaped,
-spindle-like, and so on,—and always beautifully sculptured. These
-minute and beautiful diatoms, as they are called, move about freely,
-and were long supposed to be animals; now they are known to be the
-simplest of seaweeds, consisting of only one cell. Since life first
-began, these diatoms, and other microscopic plants much like them, have
-swarmed not only in the fresh waters, but in all the oceans of the
-globe, furnishing food for mollusks and all the lowly animals whose
-food is brought into their mouths by the currents. Innumerable, and as
-wide-spread as the salt water itself, every one of these myriads of
-minute plants has left a record; for its delicate, glass-like shell
-was indestructible, and when the bit of life was lost, it sank slowly
-down to the bottom. What effect toward perceptible sediment could come
-from a thing so small that it would scarcely be felt in your eye? One
-or two, or even a million, would go for little; but century after
-century, through ages too long for us to comprehend, a steady rain of
-these exquisitely engraved particles of flint showered down upon the
-still sea-floor, almost as thickly as you have seen motes in a sunbeam,
-until there was deposited a layer, many feet in thickness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span> of nothing
-but diatom-skeletons. Though this went on to a greater or less extent
-everywhere in the sea, such deposits are not now to be discovered
-everywhere, because disturbing causes swept the shells away, or broke
-up the floor after it had been laid down; but in various parts of the
-world to-day, you may find wide beds of rock made up wholly of such
-skeletons, soldered together into hard stone; while in some regions the
-mud of our sea-bottom appears to consist of almost nothing else. The
-mighty chalk cliffs of Great Britain and the French coast were built up
-in precisely this way at the bottom of an ancient sea, whence they have
-been lifted, but they are composed of much besides diatoms.</p>
-
-<p>From the simplicity of diatoms the vegetation of the sea can be traced
-upward through larger and more complicated kinds of plants until
-we reach the enormous alg&aelig; that break the gloom of black headlands
-by their brilliant tints, and furnish a lurking-place under their
-wide-spreading and dense foliage for hosts of marine animals—some
-hiding for safety, others to watch for prey.</p>
-
-<p>Seaweeds grow in all latitudes, even close to the pole, but mainly
-along the shore, for below the depth of about one hundred fathoms none
-but microscopic forms are known. These latter float about, of course,
-and many of them have been thought to be animals because they seem able
-to move at their own will. They come to the surface as well as haunt
-the depths; and the Red Sea takes its name from the fact that a minute
-carmine-tinted alga occasionally rises to the surface in throngs so
-dense and wide as to tinge the water for miles at a stretch. The same
-thing occurs in the Pacific, where the sailors call it “sea-sawdust.”</p>
-
-<p>The proper home of the seaweed, however, is a rocky shore between
-tide-marks or just below them, and it is because the eastern coast
-of the United States is deficient in rocks—at least south of Cape
-Cod—that this is poor in alg&aelig;, compared with other regions. The seaweed
-has no roots, and only clings to the rock for support; shifting sand
-therefore would not hold it, and there are great sandy deserts under
-the ocean, bare of alg&aelig;, as some land regions are sandy deserts naked
-of terrestrial plants.</p>
-
-<p>It often happens, however, that masses of weed will be torn away from
-their moorings and set adrift. This does not necessarily kill them,
-for they go on flourishing while afloat, and such is supposed to be
-the origin of those great areas of “gulfweed” vegetation in mid-ocean
-called “sargasso seas.” You will remember that a branch of the Gulf
-Stream, striking over toward the Moorish coast of Africa, is turned
-southward there, and sweeps down to the equator, then westward again,
-circumscribing a broad region in the middle Atlantic whose only
-currents go round and round in a slow whirlpool;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span> and here it is that
-the gulfweed concentrates in masses sometimes dense enough to impede
-the progress of a ship—Columbus reported among the wonders of his first
-voyage the trouble he had in sailing through it—and covering an area
-between the Azores and the Bahamas as large as the Mississippi valley.
-This is the Sargasso Sea ordinarily referred to in books, but it is not
-the only one. A thousand miles west of San Francisco there is a similar
-collection of floating plants, and others exist under like conditions
-in the southern oceans.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_251">
-<img src="images/i_251.jpg" width="600" height="623" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE MARBLED ANGLER ON ITS GULFWEED RAFT.</p></div>
-
-<p>These floating meadows, as it were, are chosen as the abode of a
-long list of animals that rarely quit the safety and plenty of their
-precincts.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span> Among these are innumerable pretty jelly-fishes, sea-worms,
-and mollusks without shells, which cling to the buoyant plants, and
-perhaps feed solely upon them. Here are to be had in abundance the
-fairy-like, rare pteropods, the richly purple janthinas towing their
-curious rafts of eggs, and no end of small crabs. Here a small fish,
-something like a perch, spends his whole time building a nest like a
-bird’s in the tangled weed-masses, and carefully guarding his treasures
-against the large marauding fishes that haunt the place to the dread
-of its peaceful inhabitants; and here those far-flying birds, the
-wandering albatross and the petrels, hover about in search of something
-to capture and eat. The Sargasso Sea is an extremely interesting part
-of the ocean, except to the luckless sailor becalmed and balked in its
-midst, as was Sir John Hawkins when he penned the following quaint
-observations, some three centuries ago:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Were it not for the Moving of the Sea, by the Force of Winds, Tides
-and Currents, it would corrupt all the World. The Experience of
-which I Saw <i>Anno</i> 1590, lying with a Fleet about the Islands of
-Azores, almost Six Months, the greatest Part of the time we were
-becalmed, with which all the Sea became so replenished with several
-sorts of Gellies and Forms of Serpents, Adders and Snakes, as seem’d
-Wonderful; some green, some black, some yellow, some white, some of
-divers Colours, many of them had Life, and some there were a Yard
-&amp; a half, &amp; some two Yards long; which had I not seen, I
-could hardly have believed.</p></div>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_252">
-<img src="images/i_252.jpg" width="300" height="529" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A PIECE OF GULFWEED.</p>
-
-<p class="caption smallest">It is inhabited by two sea-slugs, protected<br />
-by their resemblance to its leaflets, and by<br />
-small crustaceans, hydroids, etc.</p></div>
-
-<p>In favorable places a surprising variety of seaweeds can be picked out,
-and books exist by which you may learn the method of classification
-and names of the different species, the chief of which, for America,
-is Harvey’s splendid work, published by the Smithsonian Institution.
-Not only in the shape and colors of the <i>fronds</i> (as the leaf-like
-expansions or branching tufts of the stem are called) do seaweeds
-differ greatly among themselves, but in size, varying from many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>
-diminutive or even microscopic sorts to the cable-like growths of
-California, which would measure a quarter of a mile in length if
-stretched out.</p>
-
-<p>Alg&aelig;, as I have said, constitute, with very few exceptions, the whole
-vegetation of the salt water, together with a large part of the
-vegetation in fresh water; and they serve the same useful purpose there
-that land-plants do for the dry parts of the globe, continually making
-and throwing off the oxygen which is necessary to keep the water as
-well as the air pure. To this end they do a very important work.</p>
-
-<p>This is not the whole of their service in ocean matters, however. I
-think it may be said that if it were not for seaweeds animals could not
-live in the ocean, as truthfully as that if it were not for herbage no
-animals would be able to exist on land. Seaweeds are fed upon directly
-by all sorts of salt-water life, from mollusks as big as your thumb
-to turtles the size of a dining-table, and they make a shelter for
-thousands of little fellows who never leave their shadow.</p>
-
-<p>But this is a small part of the story. The diatoms, and other minute
-plants like them, form the main portion, if not all, of the food of
-a large number of sponges, polyps, mollusks, and other stationary,
-sluggish creatures, that otherwise, so far as I see, would not be able
-to live at all. These, in turn, are fed upon by larger predaceous
-animals. Thus, though the fishes and cetaceans may never bite a seaweed
-themselves (those large marine herbivores, the manatee and dugongs,
-subsist almost wholly upon it, however), they depend for food upon
-creatures that do. We may say, therefore, that the alg&aelig; form the basis
-of all ocean life.</p>
-
-<p>Men have been able to make marine plants of service to them also—a
-resource more important formerly than now. In the last century, for
-example, the kelp trade was the one great industry of the islands at
-the west of Ireland and Scotland, employing thousands of persons, and
-paying vast revenues to the lordly owners of the shores. Kelp is the
-name of any large, leathery sort of seaweed, whose leaves float at or
-near the surface, supported by bladder-like expansions; but in this
-case the word meant the ashes of any seaweed dried in the sun and then
-slowly burned in kilns, clouding the air with huge volumes of strongly
-odorous smoke. The slow burning of the seaweed left the ashes fused
-into a solid mass, which was broken up like stone before being sold. In
-France this substance was called <i>varec</i>; and in Spain, where the alg&aelig;
-were mixed with beach-plants, cultivated for the purpose, and burned in
-shallow pits in the ground, it went to market as <i>barilla</i>.</p>
-
-<p>In those days, kelp ash was the only source of the valuable alkali
-soda needed in manufacturing glass and soap. Then a French chemist
-discovered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> how to make such soda out of common salt, and the kelp
-ovens were abandoned, except a few in Scotland, supplying the demand
-for iodine and several other chemicals contained in this residuum which
-is so rich in iodine, used in photography and in medicine, that a ton
-of kelp ash will sometimes yield twenty pounds; yet only about 100,000
-pounds are now produced in this way, while five times as much is
-obtained by chemical treatment of Chile saltpeter. It is a curious fact
-that barbarous people have long chewed seaweeds as a remedy in diseases
-for which physicians now prescribe iodine. Iodine is a violet dye,
-and the bluish and purple tints of many alg&aelig;, shells, and sea-animals
-appear to be due to the large amount of this element in sea-water.</p>
-
-<p>Seaweeds and other marine plants, like eel-grass, are collected in
-great quantities by farmers in all parts of the world to be used as a
-fertilizer. Shell-mud, dead fish, and other marine products are also
-of high value as manure, on account of the large proportion of lime,
-carbon, and soda which they contain. Indeed, there is a kind of seaweed
-growing at great depths called the nullipore, which takes up so much
-lime from the water that its substance becomes almost like stone, so
-that the plant retains its shape and full size when dried. Some of
-these nullipores are beautifully fan-shaped, scarlet or pink, and are
-often seen in museums, marked <i>corallines</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_254">
-<img src="images/i_254.jpg" width="200" height="369" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SEAWEEDS.<br />
-<span class="smallest">1. <i>Laminaria digitata.</i><br />2. <i>L. longicruris.</i></span></p></div>
-
-<p>To return to the gathering of seaweeds by farmers, nowhere is it more
-customary than in some parts of New England. Thus the well-known Second
-Beach, just east of Newport, is in the fall of the year the scene of
-a vast activity in this direction. “It may easily happen,” we are
-told, “that the pilgrim to Whitehall, topping the hill on a brilliant
-autumn morning, shall come upon a scene in which quiet plays no part.
-The seaweed, that harvest which, ripening without labor, is neither
-bought nor sold, is setting inshore under the urgings of wind and
-tide, and scores of farmers have crowded to the spot to gather it.
-An artist could hardly wish a better subject for his pencil than one
-of these wild harvestings—the plunging horses, forced far out into
-the surf, their slow return, half swimming, half wading, dragging
-the heavily loaded rakes which leave behind them a long furrow of
-foam, the heaped-up kelp glistening in the sunshine, the oxen,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span> yoked
-by fours, waiting for their load, the shouts of the men, the dash,
-the excitement, and beyond and above all, the wonderful blues and
-iridescent greens which are the peculiar property of Newport waters and
-the Newport sky.”</p>
-
-<p>Cattle and horses that are accustomed to rough pastures, like the
-Scotch and Irish moors, eat seaweed and thrive on it, especially as
-winter fodder, and from several species are derived dishes for our own
-tables. The Irish moss, or carrageen,—which is not a moss at all, but
-a seaweed,—is the most important of these, and grows on both sides of
-the northern Atlantic. In England the market supply comes chiefly from
-the western coast of Ireland, while Massachusetts Bay gives America all
-that is wanted, principally the red, coral-like <i>Chondrus crispus</i>. The
-little port of Scituate, Massachusetts, is the chief point of supply,
-where many thousands of pounds are gathered. In early June, two or
-three hundred men and women go to the rocks at low tide and pick off
-the small brown plants, each man getting about a barrel in one day’s
-work. When the tide rises, the people get into small boats and pull up
-the moss with rakes.</p>
-
-<p>The moss gathered each day is taken to the beach, where a gravelly
-space has been prepared, and is spread out to lie bleaching during all
-of the next day, when it is taken up, washed in tubs, and again spread
-out. The washing and drying in the sun continue for seven days, by
-which time it has bleached to a yellowish white. In cookery, jellies,
-<i>blanc mange</i>, and various methods of boiling in milk and mixing in
-soups are used to make it palatable. Besides being of value for food,
-carrageen serves to make sizing used by paper-makers, cloth-printers,
-hatters, and so on, to clarify beer in the brewery vats, as a medicine,
-and to make bandoline for stiffening the hair.</p>
-
-<p>Other species beside the Irish moss serve as food in Europe, generally
-in a raw state, often proving the only salty relish which the Irish
-peasant has to eat with his potatoes. One of these is the <i>dulse</i>
-of the Scotch (the <i>dillisk</i> of Ireland), which also abounds in the
-Mediterranean, and is there made into a soup. The natives of the South
-Sea Islands eat alg&aelig;, which are extraordinarily abundant and varied in
-Oriental latitudes; and the poor among the Japanese and in the interior
-of China, where the weed is sent dried, prize it especially, because it
-has a sea flavor and saves salt, which with them is a costly luxury.
-These people mix it with vegetables and other materials, to form
-thick, delicious soups and dressings. A peculiarly bad-smelling sauce,
-prepared from seaweed, is among the exports China sends to Europe as a
-condiment.</p>
-
-<p>Along the shores from Japan to Sumatra grows an alga which the natives
-of those coasts dry and keep as long as they please. When the substance
-is wanted they steep some of the dried pieces in hot water, where the
-weed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span> dissolves, and then, having been taken off the fire, stiffens
-into a glue which is said to be the strongest cement in the world.</p>
-
-<p>A kind of false isinglass, also, is a product of the Eastern seaweeds,
-and it not only enters into the pastry and confectionery of Chinese
-bakers, but serves to varnish and glue thin paper and to stiffen the
-light transparent gauzes of fine silk used in making Oriental screens,
-fans, hangings, etc., so that painters can decorate them. With a poorer
-quality the bamboo stretchers of paper umbrellas, lanterns, and various
-toys are smeared to give them hard and polished surfaces.</p>
-
-<p>Seaweed has also been used in the manufacture of paper, and its
-complete success in this branch of industry is as yet hindered only
-by the difficulty of perfect bleaching. Certain species of it are
-utilized in enormous quantities by upholsterers as stuffing for sofas,
-chairs, and mattresses; in Japan it is formed into a substitute for
-window-glass; ornaments and small articles of use, like knife-handles,
-are made by several nations out of large dried seaweeds; and, finally,
-albums of preserved fronds are one of the prettiest things to be found
-in a naturalist’s cabinet.</p>
-
-<p>The great majority of seaweeds grow between tide-marks, and they
-undoubtedly perform an important service in preventing the wear and
-tear of the coast in many situations. Some, however, grow in much
-deeper waters, and these, also, may serve as breakwaters of no mean
-strength. Such is the case, for instance, at San Pedro, near Los
-Angeles, California, where the abundant growth offshore forms such a
-barrier to the ocean rollers as to turn the open roadstead into a calm
-harbor within it.</p>
-
-<p>This belongs to the group of gigantic kelps of which those at the
-Falkland Islands and about Tierra del Fuego are other and noted
-species. Were it not for the growth of this strong, cable-like, buoyant
-plant, large numbers of other plants and sea-animals would find it
-impossible to exist exposed to the violence of the South Pacific waves.
-Sometimes the stems reach twelve hundred feet in length, and the
-bladders by which the immense fronds are buoyed up are as big as kegs.</p>
-
-<p>This gigantic seaweed is plentiful all along the Pacific coast of
-America to Alaska, and the natives of our northwest coast used to make
-extensive use of it in the way of ropes, etc. It was from this weed
-that, by a careful preparation, they made the lines for their harpoons
-and deep-sea fishing; and the bladders furnished them ready-made
-receptacles for eulachon oil, for water for their seatrips, and for
-other liquids.</p>
-
-<p>A California correspondent of the New York “Evening Post” gave a pretty
-picture, not long ago, of one of the kelp patches at St. Nicholas
-Island, where the beds of this wonderful plant reach out for a mile
-or more,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span> growing up from the rocks below and forming an effectual
-break; the seas losing their force in their effort to pass through the
-submarine meshwork.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The vines constitute a veritable forest, and, drifting over it in
-fifty or sixty feet of water, you may see a perfect maze of stems
-with broad leaves waving gracefully in the current, forming arbors,
-arches, and colonnades. Here, poised idly, in rich contrast to the
-olive-hued mass, may be seen fish of a bright golden color, others
-in tints of blue and green. The sea swell coming in causes an
-undulatory movement, and the long colonnades seem to melt one into
-another, reappearing in different shapes. When the leaves reach the
-surface, the shore wind, sweeping down from the hills, lifts them
-from the water, and they flutter in the air like mimic sails. Each
-leaf is a study. Many are encrusted with a delicate bryozo&ouml;n, which
-presents the effect of white lace upon the surface, while a close
-inspection will reveal minute anemones, coiled tubular worms, which
-throw out flower-like organs of exquisite beauty; while flat shells
-lie among them, and crawling here and there are marvels of animal
-life, shell-less mollusks, which so mimic the weed that it is almost
-impossible to distinguish them.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_257">
-<img src="images/i_257.jpg" width="400" height="399" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">DIATOMS, MAGNIFIED, IN A DROP OF WATER.</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>This protective feature is a characteristic of life among the kelp
-forests that line the entire Pacific shores of North and South
-America, many animals simulating it so perfectly in color that the
-best-trained eyes often fail to observe them. This is especially
-true of the crabs and shell-less mollusks. The latter have not only
-assumed the exact tint of the weed, but are often covered with
-barbels of flesh that simulate the tangles of the substance. Upon the
-backs of the crabs are singular markings in green and white, which
-so resemble the minute incrustations of the kelp that the resultant
-protection is complete. [Compare illustration on <a href="#i_252">page 252</a>.] Each vine
-is fastened to a stone, and the clinging roots shelter hordes of
-creatures of various kinds—deep-water crabs, octopods, starfishes,
-and a host of others.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_258">
-<img src="images/i_258.jpg" width="401" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A MARINE NATURALIST.</p></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span></p>
-
-<h2 id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII<br />
-<br />
-<span class="small">ANIMAL LIFE IN THE SEA</span></h2></div>
-
-<div>
-  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_259.jpg" width="75" height="75" alt="ornate capital T" />
-</div>
-
-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="uppercase">The</span> primitive idea of the ocean was that it was a vast desert, and a
-strange disbelief in its being inhabited by more than the very few
-forms that everybody was compelled to recognize persisted up to quite
-modern times among those who should have known better. Pliny boldly
-asserted, for example, that nothing remained in the Mediterranean Sea
-unknown to him after he had made a list of 176 marine animals! But now
-we know that the sea teems with living beings as densely as do the
-fresh waters or the air. In it began the life of the globe, for the
-fossil records of the rocks show that the first animals lived in the
-ocean, and that ages passed before any of them began to people the
-newly formed lands and breathe the atmosphere instead of the air in the
-water; and, abundant as oceanic life now is, the paleozoic seas held
-immensely greater hordes, of which many forms were giants as compared
-with those of our day. Some of the old straight chambered shells were
-twelve feet long; and I have seen fossil ammonites, extinct relatives
-of our coiled pearly nautilus, which when alive must have been too
-heavy for a man to lift. The fishes, too, could tell great stories of
-the glory of their ancestors in size and strength and numbers. Some of
-them wore solid coats of mail upon their heads, and could do battle
-even with the huge swimming reptiles that were the dreaded tyrants of
-the Mesozoic deep.</p>
-
-<p>Life in the ocean in those old geologic days was a long guerrilla
-warfare—every animal guarding against attack, and at the same time
-watching sharply for an opportunity to seize and prey upon some weaker
-companion. As for the foraminifers and other microscopic creatures,
-they were countless, and their skeletons, singly invisible, have by
-accumulation built up great masses of rock, like the chalk-beds of
-England and France.</p>
-
-<p>Though lessened in numbers and reduced in size, because the land has
-gradually won over to its side many sorts of animals which in former
-ages were exclusively confined to the water, and for other reasons, the
-sea still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span> holds its share of every “branch” and “class” (except birds,
-and it may almost claim some of them, such as the albatross, penguins,
-and petrels), and a majority of the “orders” of animal life. Glance at
-the catalogue: Foraminifers, sponges, and polyps are chiefly confined
-to salt water; starfishes, urchins (or sea-eggs), and the like, wholly
-so: mollusks (next higher) are principally oceanic, and the majority
-of the crabs inhabit salt water. Among the last-named one species, the
-common horse-foot (<i>Limulus</i>) of our shores, remains as the solitary
-representative of that immense and varied group, the trilobites, which
-so crowded the Paleozoic sea-bottom that some rocks—for instance, the
-limestones of Iowa—are packed almost as full of their fossils as is a
-raisin-box of raisins.</p>
-
-<p>None of the insects is truly marine, yet some of them are seafaring,
-truly, for they spend their lives on drifting sea-wrack, or on beaches
-just out of reach of the tides; but most of the true worms are dwellers
-in the mud of sea-shores and sea-bottoms. No one knows of any land
-fishes; but I need not tell you that fishes throng in the fresh waters
-as well as in the salt, and that many species inhabit both at different
-seasons.</p>
-
-<p>In respect to the reptiles, of which the ancient oceans contained
-gigantic and horrid types, I do not know any now that are truly oceanic
-except the turtles, if you leave out the “sea-serpent,” of which we
-hear so many wonderful and not quite satisfactory tales. You will hear
-of “sea-snakes” in the East Indies, but they are only certain kinds
-of serpents which swim well, and pass the most of their time in the
-salt water, as several species of our own country do in the rivers and
-ponds; all the oriental sea-snakes are venomous.</p>
-
-<p>It is in this manner, too, that we may count certain birds, such as the
-petrels, auks, penguins, albatrosses, frigate-birds, and their kin,
-as belonging to the ocean. They spend all their life flying over the
-waves, seeking their food there, and some of them rarely go ashore,
-except to lay their eggs and hatch their young on remote rocks, resting
-and sleeping on the billows, when not busy at their hunting. In the
-highest rank of all, however, the mammals, several families are natives
-of the “great deep”—the whales, dolphins, and porpoises, the seals and
-walruses, and the manatees and dugongs. But all these must come to the
-surface to breathe, not having gills like fishes, but true lungs.</p>
-
-<p>As it is only within the last thirty years that machinery suitable
-for deep-sea dredging has been invented, so it is only lately that we
-have been able to learn much as to the population of the ocean beneath
-the surface layer and marginal shallows. Now by means of beam-trawls,
-dredges, tangle-bars, etc., worked by steam-machinery on shipboard,
-naturalists may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span> scrape up the bottom-ooze and obtain living objects
-or their bony relics at the depth of even 3000 to 4000 fathoms or more
-than four miles, for living beings are found in these profound abysses.
-Many scientific expeditions, such as those of the English exploring
-steamer <i>Challenger</i>, about 1874, have carried out these dredging
-investigations, and the United States Fish Commission possesses the
-large, specially built, sea-going <i>Albatross</i>, provided with all the
-necessary apparatus for deep-sea exploration. By means of these and
-other vessels an enormous amount of study—all useful in ascertaining
-the habits and methods of reproduction of food-fishes—has been carried
-on by American marine naturalists.</p>
-
-<p>It appears that as you go further and further from shore, and into
-deeper and deeper water, the fewer animals and plants are obtained, and
-that very few species indeed which live along shore are to be found
-also at a depth greater than about 100 fathoms.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_261">
-<img src="images/i_261.jpg" width="350" height="556" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">LANDING THE BEAM-TRAWL ON DECK.</p></div>
-
-<p>Almost all animals, moreover, have a limited distribution in the
-sea, as is the case among those on land, though we cannot always, or
-perhaps often, say why the limits we find should exist; one sort of
-crab, or mollusk, or polyp, appearing <i>here</i> and another different one
-exclusively <i>there</i>, when the conditions seem to us very similar, and
-no barrier is perceptible. It is not easy to explain why a certain
-sort of cowry, for example, should be found only along a particular
-strip of coast, when nothing that we can see prevents its extending
-its range much further. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span> is believed that the <i>temperature</i> of the
-water is the chief fact which sets these invisible boundaries to the
-wanderings of animals living near the surface, only a few of which are
-very wide-spread in their distribution. The direction and character of
-the ocean currents have much to do with the geographic distribution of
-oceanic life, as has been mentioned in Chapter II (<a href="#Page_25">page 25</a>).</p>
-
-<p>Now in deep-sea life the case is different. Here temperature cannot be
-of so much account, since only a short distance down, the water becomes
-almost as cold as ice, and preserves this uniform chill all around
-the globe. The life found at a great depth, too, is very wide-spread,
-instead of restricted in its range, often occurring in two or more
-ocean basins; but here the restriction is an up-and-down one, rather
-than horizontal, and the secret is found in the word <i>pressure</i>. Few
-animals are able to live both in the shallows and under the enormous
-weight of sea water three or four miles deep.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_262">
-<img src="images/i_262.jpg" width="300" height="422" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A TYPICAL JELLYFISH.</p>
-
-<p class="caption smallest">This species (<i>Pelagia cyanella</i>) is a characteristic<br />
-oceanic discophorous medusa, common along the<br />
-Atlantic coast of the United States; it is<br />
-semi-transparent and lustrous pink.</p></div>
-
-<p>This has recently (1897) been summed up very clearly by Prof. Arthur P.
-Crouch, in an article in “The Nineteenth Century,” from which it will
-be worth while to quote a paragraph or two:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>The conditions under which they [that is, deep-sea animals] have
-to live in the abysmal areas seem very unfavorable to animal
-existence. The temperature at the bottom of the ocean is nearly
-down to freezing-point, and sometimes actually below it. There is a
-total absence of light, as far as sunlight is concerned, and there
-is an enormous pressure, reckoned at about one ton to the square
-inch in every 1000 fathoms, which is 160 times greater than that of
-the atmosphere we live in. At 2500 fathoms the pressure is thirty
-times more powerful than the steam pressure of a locomotive when
-drawing a train.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> As late as 1880 a leading zo&ouml;logist explaine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>d
-the existence of deep-sea animals at such depths by assuming that
-their bodies were composed of solids and liquids of great density,
-and contained no air. This, however, is not the case with deep-sea
-fish, which are provided with air-inflated swimming-bladders. If one
-of these fish, in full chase after its prey, happens to ascend beyond
-a certain level, its bladder becomes distended with the decreased
-pressure, and carries it, in spite of all its efforts, still higher
-in its course. In fact, members of this unfortunate class are liable
-to become victims to the unusual accident of falling upwards, and no
-doubt meet with a violent death soon after leaving their accustomed
-level, and long before their bodies reach the surface....</p>
-
-
-<p>The fauna of the deep sea—with a few exceptions hitherto only known
-as fossils—are new and specially modified forms of families and
-genera inhabiting shallow waters in modern times, and have been
-driven down to the depths of the ocean by their more powerful rivals
-in the battle of life, much as the ancient Britons were compelled
-to withdraw to the barren and inaccessible fastnesses of Wales.
-Some of their organs have undergone considerable modification in
-correspondence to the changed conditions of their new habitats. Thus
-down to 900 fathoms their eyes have generally become enlarged, to
-make the best of the faint light which may possibly penetrate there.
-After 1000 fathoms these organs are either still further enlarged or
-so greatly reduced that in some species they disappear altogether
-and are replaced by enormously long feelers. The only light at great
-depths which would enable large eyes to be of any service is the
-phosphorescence given out by deep-sea animals. We know that at the
-surface this light is often very powerful, and Sir Wyville Thomson
-has recorded one occasion on which the sea at night was “a perfect
-blaze of phosphorescence, so strong that lights and shadows were
-thrown on the sails and it was easy to read the smallest print.” It
-is thought possible by several naturalists that certain portions of
-the sea bottom may be as brilliantly illumined by this sort of light
-as the streets of a European city after sunset.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_263">
-<img src="images/i_263.jpg" width="550" height="295" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">THE BOTTLE-FISH AND THE PELICAN-FISH.</p></div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_264">
-<img src="images/i_264.jpg" width="390" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">AT THE BOTTOM OF THE TROPICAL SEA.</p>
-
-<p class="smallest">The large floating object is the phosphorescent, compound, oceanic
-hydrozoan <i>Agalma elegans</i>, a physophore related to the jellyfishes.
-Its tentacles trail over dead corals,—madrepore, brain-corals, etc.;
-while the living reef beyond is crowned by branching corals, corallines
-and seaweeds.</p></div>
-
-<p>One of the most striking examples of this vertical distribution, which
-forms layers of animal life, as it were, in the ocean from the abysses
-to the shallows, is shown by the coral-reefs. The foundations of these
-polyp-built barriers or islands are laid by the millions of minute individuals
-of one solid, heavy kind of coral which can flourish only in pretty
-deep water. When these have reached their highest growth they cease
-to propagate there, and a second kind comes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span> and colonizes upon the
-summit of this massive foundation and carries the work a little farther
-up. Then these die off, and a third kind plants itself upon their
-remains and carries the structure to the top, near the surface of the
-sea, where many surface-corals, corallines, and various other limy and
-flinty plants and animals help to erect a dry reef, upon which land
-vegetation can find a root-hold, and where, after a while, men may
-dwell. When these coral-built islands are ring-shaped they are called
-<i>atolls</i>, and are believed to be living crowns about the summits of
-submerged mountains.</p>
-
-<p>Men make use of something in nearly every branch of ocean life, from
-humblest to highest. The lowest of all, as I have already said, are the
-foraminifers; it is their skeletons which make up our common chalk. A
-close ally of theirs is the sponge, of which a dozen or so varieties
-are sold in the shops. Sponges come chiefly from the Mediterranean,
-the Persian and Ceylonese waters of the Indian Ocean, and from the
-Gulf coast of Florida. In the Old World they are obtained chiefly
-by diving. Men who are trained from boyhood to this work go out to
-the sponge-ground in boats on fine days. Fastening a netting-bag
-about their waists, and taking a heavy stone in their hands, they
-dive head-foremost to the bottom,—often twelve or fifteen fathoms
-below,—tear the sponges from the rocks, and rise with a bagful, to
-be dragged almost utterly exhausted into their boat, often fainting
-immediately after. This requires them to hold their breath under
-the water for two minutes or more; but none but the most expert can
-do that, and a diver does not live long. In Florida, however, the
-sponge-gatherers do not dive, but go in ships to where the sponges
-grow, and then cruise about in small boats, each of which contains
-two men: one steers, while the other leans over the side searching
-the bottom. In order to see it plainly, he has what he calls a
-“water-glass”—a common wooden pail the bottom of which is glass.
-Pressing this down into the water a few inches, he thrusts in his face,
-and can then perceive everything on the bottom with great distinctness.
-When he sees a sponge he thrusts down a long, stout pole, on the end of
-which is a double hook, like a small pitchfork, set at right angles to
-the handle, and drags up the captive.</p>
-
-<p>The sponges, having been obtained, must be put through long operations
-of rotting, beating, rinsing, drying, and bleaching before their
-skeletons—the serviceable part—are fit for use. Only a few, however,
-out of the large number of species of sponges have any commercial value.</p>
-
-<p>The limy skeletons of the coral polyps form what we term “corals.” The
-round white ones and the variously branching ones may come from any
-one of several parts of the equatorial half of the globe, and are of
-value chiefly as mantel ornaments. The red coral of which necklaces
-and other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span> bits of jewelry are made, especially at Naples, is procured
-by divers about the shores of Sicily and Sardinia, and its gathering,
-cutting and mounting into ornaments, form a flourishing industry in
-southern Italy.</p>
-
-<p>Rising in the zo&ouml;logical scale to starfishes and sea-urchins, I can
-only say that the starfishes interest oystermen because they prey upon
-their oysters, and the former often do enormous damage to planted
-beds, especially in Long Island Sound. In the old days it was thought
-that medicines made out of the “stars” and the “sea-eggs” were very
-potent in certain diseases. The trepang—some one of several sorts
-of holothurian, an elongated creature related to the starfish, and
-covered with a prickly, leathery hide, so that it looks like a sort
-of sea-cucumber—which is dried and eaten by the Chinese and Malayans,
-belongs here too; considerable quantities of these queer food-creatures
-are gathered by the Chinese along the coasts of Mexico, Southern
-California and the outlying islands, and are sold in San Francisco
-mainly for export to Asia. The sea-urchin itself is eagerly sought as
-food by the Indians of the American northwest coast.</p>
-
-<p>Coming to crustaceans—do we not eat crabs gladly, from the “shedder”
-to the huge lobster? On the coast of Maine whole villages of sea-side
-people get their support almost wholly by catching lobsters and canning
-them to send abroad. In Virginia and North Carolina, at certain
-seasons, hundreds of men are engaged in catching and shipping crabs
-for market, and in Louisiana large factories are devoted to canning
-shrimps, which are also extensively used as food in the Old World,
-where they are cooked by parching or boiling, and sold by peddlers in
-the streets.</p>
-
-<p>This brings us to the mollusks, in our glance at the useful animals of
-the ocean; and to prove <i>their</i> importance, it is enough to remind the
-reader that these include the “shell-fish” of our coasts—the oyster,
-clam, mussel, scallop, cockle, and all the rest—not a few!</p>
-
-<p>I found by my long study of the subject, when, in 1879 and 1880, I
-was gathering statistics of the United States shell-fisheries for the
-United States Fish Commission and the Tenth Census, that at that time
-there were taken from our waters, of oysters alone, almost 23,000,000
-bushels each year, worth to the oystermen about $13,500,000. During the
-twenty years that have elapsed since that investigation—the figures of
-which you may obtain in full in my Report to the Tenth Census upon the
-Oyster Industries—these amounts have largely increased.</p>
-
-<p>This business employs over 100,000 persons in this country alone; and
-oysters, clams, and other shell-fish are gathered all round the globe,
-forming one of the most important of all natural supplies of food. In
-the most thickly populated parts of the world the natural supply of
-oysters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span> long ago ceased to suffice for the demand, and artificial
-propagation and cultivation were resorted to and now prevail on both
-sides of the North Atlantic, and to a less degree elsewhere.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_267">
-<img src="images/i_267.jpg" width="450" height="536" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">STARFISHES AT HOME.</p>
-
-<p class="caption smallest">This is the common eastern American form (<i>Asterias vulgaris</i>) upper
-and under views.</p></div>
-
-<p>The Romans, away back in the days of Horace, raised oysters in ponds
-along the Italian coast, and Eastern nations preserved the custom
-during the middle ages, when Europe was doing little except quarreling
-and making pretty pictures on parchment. More recently the French of
-the Channel coast took it up, and the English followed, finding that
-their natural oyster and mussel beds were becoming exhausted. The same
-fate has overtaken our oyster-beds everywhere north of the Chesapeake,
-and largely there; so that now nearly all the oysters brought to market
-are those which have been raised upon private planted beds, which men
-own or lease and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span> attend to as they do to estates on shore; indeed, it
-is common to speak of such under-water estates as “farms.”</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_268">
-<img src="images/i_268.jpg" width="423" height="600" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SEA-SHELLS IN THE SURF.</p></div>
-
-<p>An oyster-farm may be conducted in two ways. One is to place upon a
-certain space of bottom, in some shallow bay, as many young oysters as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span>
-it will conveniently hold. These young oysters, generally hardly bigger
-than your thumb-nail, are dredged in summer from certain reefs in deep
-water, where the oysters are never allowed to grow to full size; and
-to a large extent they are brought northward by the ship-load from
-Maryland and Virginia, which have more “seed,” as it is called, than
-they need for their own planting. These young oysters, protected from
-harm, and having plenty of space to grow, come to a proper size for
-market in about three years, and are then gathered by their owners and
-sold.</p>
-
-<p>Another method is to spread old shells, pebbles, etc., on the bottom,
-to which the floating eggs emitted by adult oysters in the neighborhood
-adhere. The thick “catch” of infant mollusks hatched from these captive
-eggs is then taken up and respread in a more scattered way upon new
-ground, and is allowed to grow to maturity. The oysters raised by
-either of these methods are of better appearance and taste, as a rule,
-than those that grow naturally, because each has room enough to perfect
-its proportions.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_270_1">
-<img src="images/i_270_1.jpg" width="125" height="128" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">MELEAGRINA.</p>
-
-<p class="caption smallest"><i>Meleagrina (Avicula)<br />
-margaritifera.</i><br />
-
-<i>b.</i> byssal foramen or notch;<br />
-<i>g.</i> suspensors of the gills.</p></div>
-
-<p>Mussels, clams of many varieties, and even sponges and peak-shells, are
-also cultivated to some extent, each according to the plan its natural
-habits make advisable. In this way certain great areas of favorable
-ocean-bottom have become as valuable as the neighboring shore-land, or
-even far more so, if you compare, acre for acre, the yield of the crops
-below with those above the water-line.</p>
-
-<p>But mollusks are useful in many other ways than as human food. As they
-are known to be the principal food of several valuable fishes, enormous
-quantities are devoted to baiting hooks in both hand-lining and
-trawling for cod and similar commercial species. The quaint squids are
-mollusks, and these are especially useful for bait in certain places
-and seasons, and are taken in the North Atlantic in vast numbers for
-that purpose.</p>
-
-<p>The shells of mollusks are applied to a surprising variety of purposes,
-from paving roads to making shirt-studs, while their natural beauty
-has suggested their utilization as ornaments in a hundred ways. We
-cut them up by the million into buttons and various small objects,
-such as parasol handles, and polish and fashion them into all sorts
-of knickknacks, thus giving employment to thousands of persons. Many
-ship-loads of shells are brought to New York from the West Indies every
-year for such purposes. I need not dwell upon this, but turn to the
-interesting subject of pearls.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_270_2">
-<img src="images/i_270_2.jpg" width="125" height="156" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">CASSIDID&AElig;.</p>
-
-<p class="caption smallest">Helmet-shell<br />
-(<i>Cassis flammea</i>).</p></div>
-
-<p>Mother-of-pearl is the bright inside surface, or <i>nacre</i>, of the large
-oyster that gives us pearls, which are themselves composed of the same
-substance formed in a nodule around some intruding substance, like a
-grain of sand, which irritates the mollusk’s skin until it is made
-smooth and comfortable by this iridescent coating.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span></p>
-
-<p>Bivalves yielding this beautiful substance exist in various parts of
-the world; but in America the only fishery for the pearl-oyster is in
-the Gulf of California, and that is by no means as productive as it
-used to be. The season for pearl-fishing on the Pacific coast of Mexico
-is from June to December, but the diving can be done only in good
-weather, and for about three hours at the time of low water, since the
-tide there rises twenty feet, which would make a large dive of itself;
-and, besides, the currents are troublesome during high water.</p>
-
-<div class="image-left" id="i_270_3">
-<img src="images/i_270_3.jpg" width="150" height="314" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">SCORPION-SHELL.</p>
-
-<p class="caption smallest">(<i>Pteroceras lambis.</i>)</p></div>
-
-<p>At the right hour the Mexicans go out in their canoes, one man of
-the four or five in each canoe paddling, while the rest scrutinize
-the bottom. It may be rocky and weed-grown, but the water is clear,
-and their practised eyes detect a single round oyster where you or I
-certainly would overlook a dozen of them. Then down a man goes and
-brings up his prize, with perhaps some additional ones. Sixty or eighty
-feet is not too deep for these adventurous divers, who will stay a
-whole minute upon the bottom. No food is eaten by these men on the day
-they dive until their labor has been done.</p>
-
-<p>Western Australia is another fruitful field for pearl-oysters, and
-until a few years ago they were taken there by native blackfellows,
-diving without weights or any other assistance in any water not more
-than ten fathoms deep. The inshore shallows have now been so cleared of
-shells that the only profitable industry is to go down in deep water
-in diving-dress and make a thorough clean-up of each “patch” where the
-shells seem numerous.</p>
-
-<p>The divers find it an interesting and curious world where they
-work, but one full of fright and peril. Some men who attempt it are
-so unnerved that they will never make a second<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span> descent. None can
-endure the practice long without ill health resulting; and the native
-Australians will never enter a diver’s dress, declining to go down
-where it is too deep to dive naked.</p>
-
-<div class="image-right" id="i_270_4">
-<img src="images/i_270_4.jpg" width="150" height="250" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">MITER-SHELLS.</p>
-
-<p class="caption smallest"><i>a.</i> <i>Mitra vulpecula.</i><br />
-<i>b.</i> <i>Mitra episcopalis.</i></p></div>
-
-<p>As for the dangers, drowning by some accident to the apparatus, or
-through the stupidity of the boatmen above, is only one of them. The
-warm waters in which these men work are the home of the largest and
-most deadly sharks, and of various other submarine creatures one would
-rather not meet in their own element. Of them all the sharks are most
-to be dreaded, especially by the naked men. As a rule, however, they
-are easily frightened away, or can be avoided by the clever swimmer,
-who quickly stirs up the mud of the bottom, and rises in the fog before
-the dull shark discovers that he has gone. East Indians are said to
-fight sharks quite fearlessly, stabbing them with a knife as they roll
-over preparatory to a close attack. I have read a story to the effect
-that formerly the Mexican Indian divers on our western coast used
-to take down with them a stick of hard wood about two feet long and
-sharpened at both<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span> ends. When a shark was encountered from which they
-could not readily escape, they would snatch this weapon from their
-belts, grasp it in the middle, and thrust it dexterously crosswise
-into the widely distended mouth of the monster, opened to seize them.
-To shut down his jaws upon such a skewer would undoubtedly discomfit
-a shark or anything else; but when one thinks of the time, nerve, and
-sure aim it would require to accomplish this feat, he begins to doubt
-whether it really ever was tried. I advise you, therefore, to prove the
-story better than I have been able to do, before you pin <i>all</i> your
-faith to it.</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_271">
-<img src="images/i_271.jpg" width="500" height="426" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">VENUS’ COMB, ONE OF THE MURICES OF CHINA.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_272">
-<img src="images/i_272.jpg" width="500" height="250" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">A MUREX (“MUREX PALMA-ROS&AElig;”) OF CEYLON.</p></div>
-
-<p>An Australian pearl-diver, writing about this matter in “The Century”
-magazine a few years ago, assures us that a fifteen-foot shark,
-magnified by the water, and making a bee-line for one, is sufficient to
-make the stoutest heart quake, in spite of the assertion that sharks
-have never been known to attack a man in a rubber diving-dress. He adds:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>Neither is the sight of a large turtle comforting when one does
-not know exactly what it is, and the coiling of a sea-snake around
-one’s legs, although it has only one’s hands to bite at, is, to say
-the least, unpleasant. A little fish called the stone-fish is one
-of the enemies of the diver. It seems to make its habitation under
-the pearl-shell, as it is only when picking up a shell that any one
-has been known to be bitten. I remember well the first time I was
-bitten by this spiteful member of the finny tribe. I dropped my bag
-of shells, and hastened to the surface; but in this short space of
-time my hand and arm had so swollen that it was with difficulty I
-could get the dress off, and then was unable to work for three days,
-suffering intense pain the while. Afterward I learned that staying
-down a couple of hours after a bite will stop any further discomfort,
-the pressure of water causing much bleeding at the bitten part, and
-thus expelling the poison.</p></div>
-
-<p>All the oysters when brought ashore are opened in vats of water, and
-carefully examined for the pearls they may contain half embedded in
-their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span> mantles; but very few reward the diver with gems worth selling
-separately or otherwise than by weight as “seed” pearls. Many divers,
-therefore, do not themselves take the trouble of opening what they
-catch, but sell them unopened at a few cents a dozen, preferring the
-small and steady assured income to the chances of failure or a fortune.</p>
-
-<p>The round, flat, beautiful shells are saved, and their sale
-(for mother-of-pearl work) brings nearly as much money into the
-pearl-fishing communities in the course of a season as is derived from
-the pearls themselves.</p>
-
-<p>What beauty, as well as usefulness, have shells! And how wide is the
-science (conchology) that deals with them, and tells us not only their
-structure and manner of life, but interprets the part which their
-extraordinary forms, ornaments, colors, and appendages play in their
-“struggle for existence” down in that populous green under-world of the
-waters!</p>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_273">
-<img src="images/i_273.jpg" width="550" height="376" alt="" />
-<p class="caption">ON THE GULF STREAM SLOPE, FROM ONE TO TWO MILES BELOW
-THE SURFACE.</p></div>
-
-<div class="blockquote">
-
-<p>I know a picturesque old house [writes a charming pen in one of
-the early volumes of “Scribner’s Monthly”] that has a many-shelved
-pantry devoted to the exhibition and sale of shells, collected in
-many a long voyage to the remotest parts of the five oceans. Apart
-from their scientific interest, their associations with alien races
-and far-off countries, how beautiful these shells are in themselves!
-and how readily might the prevailing vulgarities and absurdities in
-the decoration of glass and porcelain be corrected by studying the
-ceramics of nature! How, for instance, is our sense of cleanliness
-served and our appetite wooed by the extreme smoothness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span> hardness
-of surface, and pearly white of the oyster-shell! What decoration in
-the part that receives the viand, what metallizing the surface or
-changing it into artificial marble, or covering it up with pictures,
-would take the place of the pure, colorless shell?</p>
-
-<p>Every species of these shells has a principle of growth, or law of
-form, peculiar to itself and yet based upon some more general law of
-form common to other species.... In the comb of Venus, for instance,
-the initial impulse of structure tends to produce a series of spines
-of a peculiar curvature, and arranged after a certain order that
-involves the use of similar curves. It is interesting to study the
-development of this simple principle into the complex and singular
-form of beauty comprised in the shell itself, the idea being carried
-into the most minute particulars—even the dark markings at the mouth
-being shaped like spines, and every small projection on the surface
-evidently being an arrested development of spines. In the <i>Murex
-haustellum</i>, on the contrary, nodules take the place of spines. In
-the <i>M. endivia</i> an entirely different idea is developed. Notice the
-cross-striations. Instead of prolonging themselves into cylindrically
-pointed spines, as in the case of the Venus’ comb, or bunching
-themselves into knobs, as in the <i>M. haustellum</i>, they expand into
-wonderful foliated projections, the edges of which are beautifully
-fluted, like the leaves of the lettuce. Another fine effect is
-afforded by the different texture of the inside and outside surfaces,
-down to the smallest foliation, the inner parts exhibiting a polished
-pearly white, and the outside a gray and wrinkled skin. Observe that,
-however rough or dull of hue the outside of a shell, its lips are
-always pure and often flushed with lovely color; for, as a rule (and
-here is another hint to decorators), Nature distinguishes by some
-adornment the most significant parts of her creatures, where life and
-use are centered.... The ocean, indeed, beautifies all it touches.
-Give it any rough shard, and it will so roll it about, and lick it
-with its waves, and smooth it with their soft attrition, that it will
-return you a polished and shapely nodule, exhibiting all the beauty
-of color and surface of which the material is capable.</p></div>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_274">
-<img src="images/i_274.jpg" width="600" height="267" alt="molluscs and plants" />
-</div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span></p>
-
-<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">1</span></a> This is related by the Greek historian Herodotus, and
-has often been denied, especially by the older writers; but the
-“Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica” gives it credence, and tells us that the
-latest and best critic of the geography of Herodotus, Major Rennel,
-maintains the possibility of such a voyage, and believes it was made.
-He argues that the construction of their ships, with flat bottoms and
-low masts, enabled these hardy voyagers to keep close to the land,
-and to enter all the rivers and harbors for food and water. I think,
-therefore, that we may believe that Herodotus recorded what really
-happened, even if we reject some details.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">2</span></a> This is not a Norse, but an Irish name, familiar to us as
-<i>Barney</i>.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">3</span></a> The success of this most hazardous venture, although its
-crew numbered <i>thirteen</i>, is equal to the success of Columbus’s first
-voyage, although it began on <i>Friday</i>! “Luck” has no show when it is
-pitted against pluck.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">4</span></a> An example of the so-called forty-bank galley is
-illustrated, so far as its forward end will show it, in the picture of
-the ship of Ptolemy Philopator, on <a href="#i_043">page 43</a>. The forty “banks” appear to
-be groups of oars in a few tiers.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">5</span></a> Three other terms of similar sound need explanation. The
-<i>galiot</i> was a small, fast galley of the Levant. The <i>gallivat</i> was a
-large, swift, two-masted, armed sail-boat used by Malay pirates. The
-<i>galleon</i> was any Spanish ship sailing to and from the Spanish main;
-hence, especially a treasure-ship.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">6</span></a> It was known later as the Invincible Armada.</p></div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">7</span></a> It does not follow that these creatures are conscious
-of this pressure, any more than we are of the pressure upon us of
-the fourteen pounds to the square inch of our atmosphere. The point
-is that they <i>do</i> feel it when they rise upward to a point where the
-pressure is distinctly less, just as we are conscious of a difference
-when we ascend in a balloon or climb a very high mountain, and after
-a time we find that we cannot go any farther. Land animals therefore
-have a vertical limit to their distribution as well as sea animals,
-and for analogous reasons.—E. I.</p></div></div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_275">
-<img src="images/i_275.jpg" width="600" height="90" alt="page heading decoration" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="I_O_I">INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2></div>
-
-<ul class="index">
-<li class="indx"><i>Adler</i> at Samoa, <a href="#i_200">200</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Agalma elegans, <a href="#i_264">264</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Alabama</i>, the, in action, <a href="#i_136">136</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Alg&aelig;, typical, <a href="#i_252">252</a>, <a href="#i_254">254</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Almirante Cochrane</i>, in action with <i>Huascar</i>, <a href="#i_141">141</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>America</i>, the yacht, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Antarctic scenery, <a href="#i_101">101</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ardois night-signals at sea, <a href="#i_205">205</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Argonaut shell, <a href="#i_274">274</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Armada, style of ships of the, <a href="#i_115">115</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Balloon-sail, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_186">186</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Battle-ships, modern steel, <a href="#i_134">134</a>, <a href="#i_142">142</a>, <a href="#i_144">144</a>, <a href="#i_147">147</a>, <a href="#i_150_2">150</a>, <a href="#i_153">153</a>. See also <a href="#LINE_OF_BATTLE"><span class="smcap">Line-of-Battle Ships</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Beam-trawl for deep-sea dredging, <a href="#i_261">261</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Biremes, Roman, <a href="#i_042">42</a>. See <a href="#GALLEYS"><span class="smcap">Galleys</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Boat-davits, <a href="#i_223">223</a>, <a href="#i_232">232</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Bon Homme Richard</i>, the, <a href="#i_182">182</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Bottle-fish, the, <a href="#i_263">263</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Bowsprit, the, and its rigs, <a href="#i_038">38</a>, <a href="#i_063">63</a>, <a href="#i_113">113</a>, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_175">175</a>. See <a href="#CUTTERS"><span class="smcap">Cutters</span></a> and <a href="#SLOOPS"><span class="smcap">Sloops</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Breeches-buoy, method of using, <a href="#i_229">229</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Buckeye, or “bugeye,” a, <a href="#i_198_2">198</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Buoys, <a href="#i_225_2">225</a>, <a href="#i_226">226</a>, <a href="#i_227">227</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst"><i>Cambria</i>, model of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cameos, shell used for, <a href="#i_270_1">270</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Can-buoys, <a href="#i_225_3">225</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Canoes, <a href="#i_028">28</a>, <a href="#i_037">37</a>, <a href="#i_045">45</a>, <a href="#i_198_1">198</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Caravels, <a href="#i_035">35</a>, <a href="#i_061">61</a>, <a href="#i_063">63</a>, <a href="#i_065">65</a>, <a href="#i_076">76</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Carronade, an old, <a href="#i_185">185</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cassis, a typical, <a href="#i_270_2">270</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">“Castles,” fore and aft, on ancient ships, <a href="#i_035">35</a>, <a href="#i_057">57</a>, <a href="#i_063">63</a>, <a href="#i_065">65</a>, <a href="#i_112">112</a>, <a href="#i_113">113</a>, <a href="#i_115">115</a>, <a href="#i_119">119</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Catboat, a Newport, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Center-board boats, models of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Chain-plates, <a href="#i_172">172</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Channels, <a href="#i_172">172</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Chart, an early, <a href="#i_054">54</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Chinese boats, <a href="#i_032">32</a>. Compare <a href="#MALAY_BOATS"><span class="smcap">Malay Boats</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Clewed-up, mainsails, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Clipper-ship, a, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_164">164</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Coast, destruction of, by the sea, <a href="#i_003_1">3</a>, <a href="#i_005">5</a>, <a href="#i_007">7</a>, <a href="#i_010">10</a>, <a href="#i_015">15</a>, <a href="#i_058">58</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Collision, scene in a, <a href="#i_202">202</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Columbia</i>, the, <a href="#i_146">146</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Columbus, Christopher, flag-ship of, <a href="#i_063">63</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Columbus, Christopher, statue of, <a href="#i_060">60</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Constellation</i>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="CONSTITUTION"><i>Constitution</i> frigate, <a href="#i_106">106</a>, <a href="#i_132">132</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Costumes of mariners, <a href="#i_117">117</a>, <a href="#i_123">123</a>, <a href="#i_142">142</a>, <a href="#i_147">147</a>, <a href="#i_157">157</a>, <a href="#i_172">172</a>, <a href="#i_179">179</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cruisers, modern steel, <a href="#i_146">146</a>, <a href="#i_150_2">150</a>, <a href="#i_154">154</a>, <a href="#i_205">205</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Crustaceans of the deep sea, <a href="#i_273">273</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="CUTTERS">Cutters, <a href="#i_188">188</a>, <a href="#i_191">191</a>, <a href="#i_193">193</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Day-marks (for pilots), <a href="#i_225_1">225</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Deck scenes, modern, <a href="#i_142">142</a>, <a href="#i_147">147</a>, <a href="#i_154">154</a>, <a href="#i_164">164</a>, <a href="#i_261">261</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Deck scenes on old-time vessels, <a href="#i_117">117</a>, <a href="#i_130">130</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Deep-sea dredging apparatus, <a href="#i_261">261</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Diatoms, <a href="#i_257">257</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Diving-dress, <a href="#i_258">258</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Driver (sail). See <a href="#SPANKER"><span class="smcap">Spanker</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Dynamite-cruiser, in action, <a href="#i_154">154</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Earthquake waves, <a href="#i_018">18</a>, <a href="#i_021">21</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>El Chico</i>, model of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Eskimos in summer, <a href="#i_083">83</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst" id="FELUCCA">Felucca, a, <a href="#i_175">175</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fin-keel yachts, models of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fiord, a, in New Zealand, <a href="#i_015">15</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fish-curing at St. Pierre, <a href="#i_243">243</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fishes, deep-sea, <a href="#i_263">263</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fishing-boats, American, <a href="#i_245">245</a>, <a href="#i_247">247</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fishing-boats, Canadian, <a href="#i_005">5</a>, <a href="#i_017">17</a>, <a href="#i_243">243</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fishing-boats, French, <a href="#i_007">7</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fishing-boats of the Mediterranean, <a href="#i_038">38</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fishing-pound, at low tide, <a href="#i_017">17</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Flare, burning a, at sea, <a href="#i_221">221</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Flying Dutchman</i>, the, <a href="#i_057">57</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fog-bell, a, <a href="#i_219">219</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fore-and-aft rig, <a href="#i_221">221</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Frigates, <a href="#i_125">125</a>, <a href="#i_132">132</a>, <a href="#i_136">136</a>, <a href="#i_182">182</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Full-rigged ship. See <a href="#FULL_RIGGED"><span class="smcap">Ship</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Gaff-topsail, <a href="#i_186">186</a>, <a href="#i_193">193</a>, <a href="#i_221">221</a>. See <a href="#CUTTERS"><span class="smcap">Cutters</span></a> and <a href="#SLOOPS"><span class="smcap">Sloops</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Galleons, Spanish, <a href="#i_119">119</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="GALLEYS">Galleys, ancient, <a href="#i_042">42</a>, <a href="#i_043">43</a>, <a href="#i_109">109</a>, <a href="#i_111">111</a>, <a href="#i_112">112</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Genesta</i>, the yacht, <a href="#i_191">191</a>, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Gloriana</i>, model of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Great Harry</i>, bow of, <a href="#i_113">113</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Guerri&egrave;re</i>, frigate, in action, <a href="#i_125">125</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Gulfweed and its inhabitants, <a href="#i_252">252</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst"><i>Halcyon</i>, the, yacht, <a href="#i_186">186</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Hamilcar’s stairway of the galleys, <a href="#i_109">109</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Hand-line fishing, <a href="#i_245">245</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Helmet-shell, a, <a href="#i_270_2">270</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Homeward-bound pennant, <a href="#i_133">133</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">“Hove to,” attitude of sails, <a href="#i_037">37</a>, <a href="#i_247">247</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Huascar</i>, in action, <a href="#i_141">141</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Hydroid, a compound, <a href="#i_264">264</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Icebergs and ice-floes, <a href="#i_079">79</a>, <a href="#i_080">80</a>, <a href="#i_085">85</a>, <a href="#i_089">89</a>, <a href="#i_092">92</a>, <a href="#i_097">97</a>, <a href="#i_103">103</a>, <a href="#i_105">105</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Indiana</i>, the, <a href="#i_144">144</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Irex</i>, the yacht, <a href="#i_191">191</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ironclads, early, <a href="#i_134">134</a>, <a href="#i_138">138</a>, <a href="#i_139">139</a>, <a href="#i_141">141</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Jellyfish, a typical, <a href="#i_262">262</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Jib-sails, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_175">175</a>, <a href="#i_186">186</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Jib-staysails, <a href="#i_089">89</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_175">175</a>, <a href="#i_221">221</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst"><i>Kearsarge</i>, the, in action with the <i>Alabama</i>, <a href="#i_136">136</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Krakatoa, in eruption, <a href="#i_012">12</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Lanterns, stern, of old ships, <a href="#i_057">57</a>, <a href="#i_115">115</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lateen rigs, <a href="#i_028">28</a>, <a href="#i_035">35</a>, <a href="#i_037">37</a>, <a href="#i_038">38</a>, <a href="#i_061">61</a>, <a href="#i_181">181</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Launch, a steam, <a href="#i_153">153</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Leeboard, a, <a href="#i_198_3">198</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Leg-of-mutton sails, <a href="#i_198_1">198</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Life-boat, a self-righting, <a href="#i_230">230</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Life-saving service, the, <a href="#i_228">228</a>, <a href="#i_229">229</a>, <a href="#i_230">230</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Light-houses, <a href="#i_018">18</a>, <a href="#i_213">213</a>, <a href="#i_214">214</a>, <a href="#i_215">215</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Light-ship, Nantucket, <a href="#i_217">217</a>, <a href="#i_218">218</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Light-ship, Sandy Hook, <a href="#i_186">186</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="LINE_OF_BATTLE">Line-of-battle ships, wooden, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_134">134</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lugsail rigs, <a href="#i_042">42</a>, <a href="#i_043">43</a>, <a href="#i_045">45</a>, <a href="#i_048">48</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst"><i>Magic</i>, model of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Main chains, <a href="#i_172">172</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Maine</i>, the, <a href="#i_153">153</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Mainsail or main course, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_164">164</a>, <a href="#i_175">175</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>, <a href="#i_221">221</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="MALAY_BOATS">Malay boats, <a href="#i_028">28</a>, <a href="#i_181">181</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Maria</i>, the yacht, <a href="#i_188">188</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Massachusetts</i>, the, <a href="#i_142">142</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Matting sails, <a href="#i_032">32</a>, <a href="#i_181">181</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Mayflower</i>, the yacht, <a href="#i_186">186</a>, <a href="#i_194_2">194</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Medieval vessels, various forms of, <a href="#i_035">35</a>, <a href="#i_063">63</a>, <a href="#i_065">65</a>, <a href="#i_112">112</a>, <a href="#i_115">115</a>, <a href="#i_119">119</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Meleagrina, <a href="#i_270_1">270</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Merrimac</i>, the, <a href="#i_138">138</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Midnight sun at sea, <a href="#i_002">2</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Midshipmen of <a href="#i_181">181</a>2, <a href="#i_123">123</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Military masts, ancient, <a href="#i_111">111</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Military masts, modern, <a href="#i_134">134</a>, <a href="#i_141">141</a>, <a href="#i_144">144</a>, <a href="#i_146">146</a>, <a href="#i_150_2">150</a>, <a href="#i_153">153</a>, <a href="#i_205">205</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Minot’s Ledge lighthouse, <a href="#i_213">213</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Mischief</i> model of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Miter-shells (Mitra), <a href="#i_270_4">270</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Mizzen, the ancient (compare <a href="#SPANKER"><span class="smcap">Spanker</span></a>), <a href="#i_063">63</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Models of hulls of yachts, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Mollusks, shells of. See <a href="#SEA_SHELLS"><span class="smcap">Sea-shells</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Monitor</i>, the, <a href="#i_139">139</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Monitors, <a href="#i_139">139</a>, <a href="#i_149">149</a>, <a href="#i_150_2">150</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Muleta, a, <a href="#i_038">38</a>. Compare <a href="#FELUCCA"><span class="smcap">Felucca</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Murex-shells, <a href="#i_263">263</a>, <a href="#i_272">272</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Muriel</i>, the yacht, <a href="#i_193">193</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Nelson, portrait of, <a href="#i_129">129</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Nelson, signal of, at Trafalgar, <a href="#i_127">127</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Nun buoys, <a href="#i_225_2">225</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Obstruction buoy, <a href="#i_226">226</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Olive-shell (Oliva), <a href="#i_268">268</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Outriggers, forms of, <a href="#i_028">28</a>, <a href="#i_037">37</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Packet, a Liverpool, <a href="#i_160">160</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="indx">Paper-nautilus, the, <a href="#i_274">274</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pearl-oyster, the, <a href="#i_270_1">270</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pelagia cyanella, <a href="#i_262">262</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pelican-fish, the, <a href="#i_263">263</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Penguins, Antarctic, <a href="#i_101">101</a>, <a href="#i_103">103</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Physophore, a, <a href="#i_264">264</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pilot-boat, <a href="#i_221">221</a>, <a href="#i_223">223</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pirates, at home, <a href="#i_179">179</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pirates, Malay, <a href="#i_181">181</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Proas, Malay, <a href="#i_028">28</a>, <a href="#i_037">37</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pteroceras lambis, <a href="#i_270_3">270</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Puritan</i>, the yacht, <a href="#i_194_1">194</a>, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Raking masts, <a href="#i_188">188</a>, <a href="#i_198_2">198</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Rapid-fire guns, <a href="#i_147">147</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Reefing a topsail, <a href="#i_031">31</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Reef-points, <a href="#i_043">43</a>, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_132">132</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_188">188</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Rowboats, <a href="#i_045">45</a>, <a href="#i_236">236</a>, <a href="#i_239">239</a>, <a href="#i_248">248</a>. See also <a href="#GALLEYS"><span class="smcap">Galleys</span></a> and <a href="#YAWL"><span class="smcap">Yawl</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Royal sails, <a href="#i_132">132</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Sails, decorated, <a href="#i_045">45</a>, <a href="#i_048">48</a>, <a href="#i_063">63</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sails, various forms of, <a href="#i_031">31</a>, <a href="#i_032">32</a>, <a href="#i_113">113</a>, <a href="#i_115">115</a>, <a href="#i_119">119</a>, <a href="#i_181">181</a>. See also <a href="#i_035">names of sails and rigs</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Saloon of a modern steamship, <a href="#i_161">161</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Saloon of a packet-ship, <a href="#i_160">160</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Samoans battling with surf, <a href="#i_208">208</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sandbagger-sloop, a, <a href="#i_197_2">197</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Sappho</i>, model of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sargassum, a piece of, <a href="#i_252">252</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Schooners, <a href="#i_026">26</a>,<a href="#i_186">186</a>, <a href="#i_188">188</a>, <a href="#i_221">221</a>, <a href="#i_223">223</a>, <a href="#i_247">247</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Scorpion-shell, the, <a href="#i_270_3">270</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sea-anemones, <a href="#i_273">273</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sea-caves, <a href="#i_010">10</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sea-fights, <a href="#i_074">74</a>, <a href="#i_106">106</a>, <a href="#i_111">111</a>, <a href="#i_115">115</a>, <a href="#i_117">117</a>, <a href="#i_119">119</a>, <a href="#i_125">125</a>, <a href="#i_130">130</a>, <a href="#i_136">136</a>, <a href="#i_141">141</a>, <a href="#i_147">147</a>, <a href="#i_175">175</a>, <a href="#i_182">182</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Search-lights, <a href="#i_150_1">150</a>, <a href="#i_153">153</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="SEA_SHELLS">Sea-shells, <a href="#i_268">268</a>, <a href="#i_270_1">270</a>, <a href="#i_271">271</a>, <a href="#i_272">272</a>, <a href="#i_274">274</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sea-slugs (Doris), <a href="#i_252">252</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="SEAWEEDS">Seaweeds, <a href="#i_252">252</a>, <a href="#i_254">254</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Serapis</i>, the, <a href="#i_182">182</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="FULL_RIGGED">Ship, a full-rigged, <a href="#i_037">37</a>, <a href="#i_089">89</a>, <a href="#i_092">92</a>, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_132">132</a>, <a href="#i_133">133</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>, <a href="#i_232">232</a>, <a href="#i_234">234</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ship of the line. See <a href="#LINE_OF_BATTLE"><span class="smcap">Line-of-Battle Ships</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ship weathering a gale with sails&nbsp; furled, <a href="#i_008">8</a>, <a href="#i_056">56</a>, <a href="#i_089">89</a>, <a href="#i_207">207</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ships’ boats, <a href="#i_232">232</a>, <a href="#i_236">236</a>, <a href="#i_239">239</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sharpie, a, <a href="#i_198_1">198</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Shrouds, <a href="#i_164">164</a>, <a href="#i_172">172</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sidewheel steamer, a, <a href="#i_021">21</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Signal flags, <a href="#i_127">127</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Signaling at sea, <a href="#i_205">205</a>, <a href="#i_206">206</a>, <a href="#i_221">221</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Signal-mast, a, <a href="#i_142">142</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Siren, on a steamship, <a href="#i_220">220</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sky-scraper sails, <a href="#i_132">132</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="SLOOPS">Sloops, <a href="#i_024">24</a>, <a href="#i_186">186</a>, <a href="#i_194_1">194</a>, <a href="#i_197_2">197</a>, <a href="#i_199">199</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sloops-of-war, <a href="#i_130">130</a>, <a href="#i_207">207</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="SPANKER">Spanker-, driver-, or mizzen-sail, <a href="#i_089">89</a>, <a href="#i_196">196</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Spar buoys, <a href="#i_225_4">225</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sponsons, <a href="#i_144">144</a>, <a href="#i_153">153</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Starfish, the common, <a href="#i_267">267</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Staysails, <a href="#i_221">221</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steam frigates, <a href="#i_136">136</a>, <a href="#i_138">138</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steamships, modern mercantile, <a href="#i_161">161</a>, <a href="#i_167">167</a>, <a href="#i_181">181</a>, <a href="#i_223">223</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steam-yacht, a, <a href="#i_186">186</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steering oar, a modern, <a href="#i_239">239</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Storm scenes, <a href="#i_018">18</a>, <a href="#i_021">21</a>, <a href="#i_024">24</a>, <a href="#i_031">31</a>, <a href="#i_056">56</a>, <a href="#i_200">200</a>, <a href="#i_207">207</a>, <a href="#i_208">208</a>, <a href="#i_213">213</a>, <a href="#i_217">217</a>, <a href="#i_247">247</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Studding-sails, <a href="#i_132">132</a>, <a href="#i_133">133</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Surf, and its effect, <a href="#i_003_2">3</a>, <a href="#i_021">21</a>, <a href="#i_071">71</a>, <a href="#i_208">208</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst"><i>Tara</i>, the yacht, <a href="#i_191">191</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Tecumseh</i>, the monitor, <a href="#i_149">149</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Theseus</i> and <i>Guerri&egrave;re</i>, <a href="#i_125">125</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Thistle</i>, model of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Tides—scene at low tide, <a href="#i_017">17</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Topcastles, <a href="#i_063">63</a>, <a href="#i_111">111</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Topgallantsails, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_132">132</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Topsails, <a href="#i_120">120</a>, <a href="#i_125">125</a>, <a href="#i_158">158</a>, <a href="#i_175">175</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Topsails, square, <a href="#i_120">120</a>,<a href="#i_132">132</a>, <a href="#i_184">184</a>. (See also <a href="#FULL_RIGGED"><span class="smcap">Ships, Full-Rigged</span></a>.)</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Torpedo-boats, <a href="#i_150_2">150</a>, <a href="#i_151">151</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Torpedo-boats, submarine, <a href="#i_152">152</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Torpedoes and their effect, <a href="#i_149">149</a>, <a href="#i_150_2">150</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Towing a barge, <a href="#i_170">170</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Trying out whale-blubber, <a href="#i_234">234</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Turrets, <a href="#i_142">142</a>, <a href="#i_144">144</a>, <a href="#i_150_2">150</a>, <a href="#i_153">153</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Venus’ Comb, <a href="#i_271">271</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Very night-signals, <a href="#i_206">206</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Vesuvius</i>, the, <a href="#i_154">154</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Viking ships, <a href="#i_045">45</a>, <a href="#i_048">48</a>, <a href="#i_051">51</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Volcanoes on the sea-shore, <a href="#i_012">12</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Volunteer</i>, model of, <a href="#i_186">186</a>, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Walking the plank, <a href="#i_172">172</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Walruses on the ice, <a href="#i_080">80</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ward-room of a war-ship, <a href="#i_123">123</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Wasp</i>, in action with <i>Frolic</i>, <a href="#i_130">130</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Wasp</i>, model of the yacht, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Waves, oceanic, <a href="#i_008">8</a>, <a href="#i_015">15</a>, <a href="#i_024">24</a>, <a href="#i_056">56</a>, <a href="#i_057">57</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whale, sperm, head of, <a href="#i_240">240</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whaleback, a, <a href="#i_169">169</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whaleboats, <a href="#i_232">232</a>, <a href="#i_236">236</a>, <a href="#i_239">239</a>, <a href="#i_240">240</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whalers, <a href="#i_232">232</a>-<a href="#i_240">240</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whistling buoy, <a href="#i_227">227</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Wreck, <a href="#i_130">130</a>, <a href="#i_149">149</a>, <a href="#i_202">202</a>, <a href="#i_229">229</a>, <a href="#i_230">230</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Yachts, models of, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Yachts, racing, <a href="#i_186">186</a>, <a href="#i_188">188</a>, <a href="#i_191">191</a>, <a href="#i_193">193</a>, <a href="#i_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Yawl, a ship’s, <a href="#i_105">105</a>, <a href="#i_223">223</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="YAWL">Yawl-rig, the, <a href="#i_197_1">197</a>.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_276">
-<img src="images/i_276.jpg" width="250" height="128" alt="" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_277">
-<img src="images/i_277.jpg" width="600" height="89" alt="page heading decoration" />
-</div>
-
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="GENERAL_INDEX">GENERAL INDEX</h2></div>
-
-<ul class="index">
-<li class="ifrst">Africa, first circumnavigated, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">“America,” origin of the name, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">America, visited by Norsemen, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">America Cup, races for, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">American Arctic exploration, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Atlantic, North, early voyages in, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Atlantic Ocean, defined, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Atlantis, the fabled land of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Alert</i>, Arctic expedition of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Alg&aelig;. <span class="smcap">See <a href="#SEAWEEDS">Seaweeds</a>.</span></li>
-
-<li class="indx">Algerian pirates, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ancient sea-animals, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Andr&eacute;e’s Arctic balloon, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Animal life in the sea</span>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>-<a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Animals inhabiting seaweeds, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Antarctic Ocean, defined, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Arabic commerce, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Arabs, as navigators, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Arctic American coast traced, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Arctic exploration, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>-<a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Arctic Ocean, defined, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Armada, the Spanish, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Armor for ships, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Astrolabe, the, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Australia, discovery of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Baffin, voyage to Baffin’s Bay, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Balboa, discovers the Pacific, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Banks of Newfoundland, fishing on, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Barataria pirates of Louisiana, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Barbarossa, the brothers, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Barbary States, the, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Barentz and Barentz’s Sea, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Barks described, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Battle-ships, modern steel, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Bering, expeditions of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Biremes, Greek and Roman, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Bj&auml;rne’s discoveries, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Boats of the Egyptians, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Boats of the Phœnicians, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="SCANDINAVIANS">Boats of early Scandinavians, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Boats, primitive, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Bon Homme Richard</i> and <i>Serapis</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Bowsprit sails, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Brazil, discovery of, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Brazil, the name, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Brigs described, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Buccaneers, career of the, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Buckeye, or “bugeye,” <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Buoys and channel marks, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Cabot’s voyage to America, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Canada discovered, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cape Horn, first rounded, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cape of Good Hope discovered, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Captain</i> capsized, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Caravels of Columbus, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Carrageen or Irish moss, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Carthaginians as navigators, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cartier discovers Canada, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Catboat described, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Center-board, explained, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Challenger</i> expedition, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Chancellor</i>, voyage of, to the White Sea, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Charybdis, whirlpool of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Chesapeake</i> and <i>Shannon</i>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Chinese as navigators, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Clippers, Baltimore, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Colossus of Rhodes, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Columbus, Christopher, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Commerce at sea, history of, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Commerce, early European, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Commerce, medieval, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Commerce, modern, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Compass, the mariner’s, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Constitution</i>, U. S. frigate, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>-<a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Constitution</i>, in the war with Tripoli,<a href="#Page_174">174</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cook, Captain James, voyage of, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Copenhagen, battle of, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Corals and coral polyps, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Corsairs, the, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Corte-Real, voyage of, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Crabs, caught for market, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cruisers, service of, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Currents in the ocean. <a href="#OCEAN_CURRENTS"><span class="smcap">See Ocean Currents.</span></a></li>
-
-<li class="indx">Cutter, rig of a, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Dampier, voyages of, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Dangers of the Deep</span>, <a href="#i_200">200</a>-<a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Davis, exploration of Davis’s Strait, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Decatur’s exploit at Tripoli, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Deep-sea conditions of life, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">De Long, death of Lieutenant, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Dias, Bartholomew, voyage of, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Diatoms described, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Distribution of animals in the sea, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">“Don’t give up the ship,” <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Drake, Francis, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Dredging, deep-sea, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Dynamite-throwing, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Earthquake-waves, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">East India Companies, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">“East Indiaman,” an, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">East Indian pirates, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">East Indies, the, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Eddystone lighthouse, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Egypt’s grain-trade, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">“England expects every man will do his duty,” <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">England’s sea-wars, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Erik the Red, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Faroes discovered, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Fishing and other Marine Industries</span>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>-<a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fishing in the North Atlantic, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fin keels, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fire-ships, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fog-horns and sirens, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Fram</i>, voyage of the, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Francis Joseph Land, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Franklin, Sir John, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">French-American naval war, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Frigates, service of, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Frobisher, Martin, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Fundy, tides in the Bay of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Galiot, the, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Galleass, the, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Galleon, the, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Galleys, early types of, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Gallivat, the, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Geography, early knowledge of, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Great Harry</i>, the, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Greely, Gen. A. W., Arctic work by, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Greenland discovered, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Greenland, coasts explored, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Guerri&egrave;re</i>, story of the, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Gulf Stream, the, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Gulfweed (Sargassum), <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Gunnbj&ouml;rn, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Guns of war-ships, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Hall, Charles, Arctic exploration by, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Hand-line fishing, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Hanno, expedition of, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Harbor-beacons, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Harbor-defense vessels, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Hawkins, John, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Henry, the navigator, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Hittites, the, as navigators, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Holland, as a sea-power, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Howard, Admiral, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Hudson, discoveries by, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Iceland discovered, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Indian Ocean defined, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Instruments for navigation, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Irish moss, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Irish sea-wanderers, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ironclads, early, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Jean Bart, the privateer, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Jeannette</i>, voyage of the, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Kane, Dr. E. K., Arctic exploration by, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Kearsarge</i> and <i>Alabama</i>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Kearsarge</i> wrecked, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Kelp and kelp-ash, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Kidd, Captain, the pirate, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="indx">Krakatoa, explosion of, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Kuroshiwo (Japan current), <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Lafitte, the pirate, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">La Plata, Rio, first entered, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lateen rigs, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lead keels, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lee-board, explained, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Leif Erikson’s voyage, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lepanto, victory of, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Letters of marque, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Life-saving service, the United States, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lighthouses, arrangements for lighting, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lighthouses, history of, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Light-ships, American, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Line-of-battle ships, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#i_134">134</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Live stock carried on long voyages, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lockwood reaches “highest north,” <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Lug-sails explained, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">McClure, Arctic exploration by, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Maelstrom, the, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Magellan circumnavigates the world, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Magnetic pole determined, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Maps, early, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Masts, names of, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Medieval ships, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Mediterranean Sea, defined, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Melville’s search for <i>Jeannette</i> survivors, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Mercator, the map-maker, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Merchants of the Sea, the</span>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Mines, submarine, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Minot’s Ledge lighthouse, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Mollusks, utility of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Monitor</i>, the, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Morgan, the pirate, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Mother-of-pearl, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Murex-shells, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Myths as to Atlantic islands, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Nansen, Arctic work of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Napoleon’s sea-campaigns, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Naval warfare, beginning of, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Naval warfare, medieval, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Naval warfare, theory of, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Navigation, prehistoric, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Navigation, instruments for, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Navy, Byzantine, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Navy, French, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Navy, Greek, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Navy, English, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Navy, Roman, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Nearchus, voyage of, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Nelson, Admiral Horatio, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>-<a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Nelson’s famous signal, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Newfoundland, discovery of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Night-signals at sea, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Nile, battle of the, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Nordenskj&ouml;ld’s voyage in the <i>Vega</i>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Norsemen. See <a href="#SCANDINAVIANS"><span class="smcap">Scandinavians</span></a> and <a href="#VIKINGS"><span class="smcap">Vikings</span></a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">North America discovered, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">North Atlantic, exploration of, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Northeast Passage, search for, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Northwest Passage, search for, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">North Pacific explored, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Nova Zembla, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst"><span class="smcap">Ocean, the, and its Origin</span>, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>-<a href="#i_008">8</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ocean, bed of the, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ocean, characteristics of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ocean, chemistry of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="OCEAN_CURRENTS">Ocean currents, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ocean, depth of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ocean, effects of upon the land, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ocean, life in, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>-<a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ocean, saltness of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Old Ironsides.</i> See <span class="smcap"><a href="#CONSTITUTION">Constitution</a></span>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ooze, oceanic, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Outriggers, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Oysters and oyster culture, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst" id="PACIFIC_OCEAN">Pacific Ocean, defined, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pacific Ocean, discovery of, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Packet-ships, transatlantic, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Paddles and oars, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Paleocrystic Sea, the, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Parry, Arctic explorations by, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Payer and Weyprecht, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Paul Jones, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pearl-oyster and pearls, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Peary, Arctic work of, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Persians as navigators, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Philadelphia</i>, U. S. frigate at Tripoli, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Phœnicians as navigators, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pilots and their duties, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>-<a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Piracy, history of, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>-<a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Piracy in the East Indies, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Plants of the Sea and their Uses</span>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_257">257</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Polaris</i>, misadventure of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pope, the, divides the earth, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Portugal as a sea-power, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Pressure, effects of, in the sea, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Prester John, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Privateering, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ptolemy, the geographer, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">“Redbeard,” the pirate, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Rigging of primitive ships, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Robbers of the Seas</span>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>-<a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ross, Arctic explorations by, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Royal George</i>, sunk, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Rules of the road at sea, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Russian Arctic coast, the, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Sails, lateen, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sails, names of a ship’s, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sails of early ships, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sails, square-rigged, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sails, two types of, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">St. Lawrence Bay and River discovered, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">St. Pierre and Miquelon, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Salamis, battle of, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Samoa, the great storm at, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_211">211</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sandbagger, a, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sardines, fishing for, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sargasso Seas, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Schooners, described, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Scylla and Charybdis, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sealing, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Search-light, uses of, on war-ships, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sea-shells, use and beauty of, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sea-snakes, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="SEEWEEDS">Seaweeds, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>-<a href="#Page_257">257</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Secrets won from the Frozen North</span>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>-<a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Serapis</i>, fight of the, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Seventy-four, a, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sharks, as a danger to divers, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sharpie, characteristics of the, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ship-building, development of, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ship-chandler, a, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ship, sails of a full-rigged, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Ships, the Building and Rigging of</span>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ships’ lanterns and lights, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ships, Phœnician, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Ships, Roman merchant, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Siberia, explorations north of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>,&nbsp; <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Signaling at night, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sirens, or fog-horns, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Slave-trade, the, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sloop, a, described, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Solis discovers the La Plata, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">South America, discovery of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">South Sea. See <span class="smcap"><a href="#PACIFIC_OCEAN">Pacific Ocean</a></span>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Spanish conquerors in West Indies, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Spitzbergen, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Sponges and their taking, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Spritsail-mast, the, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Square-rig, examples of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Starfishes, damage by, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steamships, development of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steamships, ocean courses of, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steamships, records of transatlantic, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steerage passage, the, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Steering, methods of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Suez Canal, the, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Table of sea-road distances, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Tactics, naval, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Tasman, voyages of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Telegraph, submarine, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Tides, explained, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Topsail schooner, described, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Torpedo-boats, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>-<a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Torpedoes and submarine mines, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Trafalgar, battle of, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Trawls described, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Treasure-ships, Spanish, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Trepang, or <i>b&ecirc;che la mer</i>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Tripoli, bombardment of, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Triremes, Greek and Roman, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Tunnies, fishing for, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Turtles, as a danger to divers, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">United States exploring expedition, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">United States, naval incidents, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>,&nbsp; <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="ifrst">Vasco da Gama, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span></li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Vega</i>, voyage of, north of Asia, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Venice, state barge of, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Venus’-comb shell, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Verrazano, voyage of, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Vespucci, Amerigo, voyages of, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Vesuvius</i>, the dynamite-cruiser, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx" id="VIKINGS">Vikings, origin and voyages of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Vinland visited, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">Voyages and Explorations, Early</span>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Walrus-hunting, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><span class="smcap">War-ships and Naval Battles</span>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">War-ships wrecked at Samoa, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>-<a href="#Page_211">211</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx"><i>Wasp</i> and <i>Frolic</i>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Water-spouts at sea, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Waves, tides, and currents, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Weather-stations, international, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">West coast of Africa, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Weyprecht, Arctic work of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whaleback, the, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whaling, history of American, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whaling, history of European, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whaling, in the North Atlantic, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whaling, methods of, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>-<a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Whaling-vessels, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Wreckers, doings of, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst"><span class="smcap">Yachting and Pleasure-boating</span>, <a href="#i_186">186</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Yachting, early history of, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Yacht-clubs in the United States, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Yachts, designing racing, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Yachts, rigs of small, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</li>
-
-<li class="indx">Yawl, characteristics of the, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</li>
-
-
-<li class="ifrst">Zeni, voyages of the, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<div class="figcenter" id="i_279">
-<img src="images/i_279.jpg" width="600" height="165" alt="coastal scene" />
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="transnote">
-<p class="noindent">Transcriber’s Note:-</p>
-<p>The original spelling, hyphenation, accentuation and punctuation has
-been retained, except for apparent typographical errors.</p>
-
-<p>In Chapter 10, the quotation following the 10th paragaph stated:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote"><p>On her port side she carries a red light, and it is so shut in that
-it cannot be seen from the <b>port</b> side or from behind.</p></div>
-
-<p>This has been corrected to read:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquote"><p>On her port side she carries a red light, and it is so shut in that
-it cannot be seen from the <b>starboard</b> side or from behind.</p></div>
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of Project Gutenberg's The Book of the Ocean, by Ernest Ingersoll
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