The Sea Rovers

A glorious vision is Gloucester harbor, whether seen under the radiant sun of a clear June morning or through the haze and smoke of a mellow October afternoon.

Gloucester town lies on a range of hills around the harbor, and fortunate is the man who chances to see it as the background to a stirring marine picture when on a still summer's morning a fleet of two or three hundred schooners is putting to sea after a storm, spreading their white duck against the blue sky and fanning gently hither and thither, singly or in picturesque groups, before the catspaws or idly drifting to eastward, stretching in a long line beyond Thatcher's Island and catching the fresh breeze that darkens the distant offing. Here the green of their graceful hulls, the gilt scrollwork on the bows and the canvas on the tall, tapering masts are reflected as in a mirror on the calm surface; or beyond they are seen heeling over to the first breath of the incoming sea wind that ruffles the glinting steel of the sheeny swell, forming as a whole a scene of inexhaustible variety and beauty.

Such a spectacle gives the stranger fitting introduction to Gloucester, for from earliest times the men of the gray old town have been followers of the sea. It was three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth that the first Englishman settled on Cape Ann, at the place now called Gloucester, which took its name from the old English cathedral city whence many of its settlers had come. America's Gloucester doubtless seems young to the mother town, which is of British origin and was built before the Romans crossed from Gaul; but, despite the great cathedral in the English town and the importance in the clerical world of the prelates and church dignitaries who found livings there, the Yankee town was for many years a place of more consequence in the world of trade and profit than the English Gloucester has ever been.

Founded as a rendezvous where fishermen could cure their fish and fit out for their trips, in the old days Gloucester in Massachusetts had fishing and whaling fleets, and her boats not only went out on the Banks in search of cod, but to the far limits of the North and South Seas they sailed to bring back rich cargoes of whale oil. Her fleets ventured into every sea from which profit could be brought, and boys born in the town or its neighbors three or four generations agone all looked forward to a half dozen cruises as a matter of course, just as the modern boy knows that he must go to school and learn to read and write. It was a rough school to which the youth of Gloucester and Cape Ann went, but it was a good one. They learned there to be brave and manly, and seafaring broadened the minds of men who had they stayed at home would have been sadly provincial and narrow.

Thus the history of Gloucester centers in the fisheries. The yarns most often told at her firesides are of hairbreadth escapes at sea; her legends and romances have a flavor of the salt waves about them; her rugged granite shore is marked with the scenes of memorable shipwrecks and storms; her town records are the records of fleets that have gone down on the Banks, of pinks and schooners that have foundered on the Georges, of heroes that have toiled for their families and fought the grim battle of life with the fogs, the lightning and the swooping billows of the sou'wester, and with the ice, the hail and the short, savage cross seas and terrible blast of the raging nor'wester, while their children have cried for their absent fathers and their wives have lain awake through long, dreary nights, burning the light in the window and straining their eyes to see through the gloom of the storm the long expected vessel and the beloved forms that perhaps have already gone down at sea.

The discovery of petroleum struck the Gloucester whaling industry a blow from which it has never recovered, but the town's fisheries are still in thriving condition. Four hundred fishing vessels of sufficient consequence to be registered hail at the present time from Gloucester. The number of men employed in these vessels, the majority of which are as speedy and well built as pleasure yachts, is upward of 5,000. Many of the fishermen are from the British provinces and make excellent skippers and sailors, while Sweden, Norway and the Azore Islands contribute a large number, who are, as a rule, orderly, capable and industrious. They fare well as compared with the fishermen of other days or with men now before the mast of the merchant service, and fresh pies, biscuits, fowls, eggs and like delicacies are frequently seen in the forecastle of a Gloucester banker.

The mackerel fishermen bound for the Georges Banks usually leave Gloucester as early as the last of February, but those bound to other waters with the cod, halibut and haddock fishermen do not start until later. The cod are caught chiefly on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where the watch lights of the Gloucester men twinkle in the midnight gloom in company with those of the French fishers of Miquelon and St. Pierre. Mackerel are also caught in the Bay of St. Lawrence, off Cape North, Sidney and the Magdalen Islands, where the fishermen often linger until late in the fall and are sometimes assailed by heavy gales among those inhospitable shores, without sea room, on a lee shore and no safe port to run to. The haddock and halibut are oftener caught on Brown's Bank and within the waters of New England. There are several modes of fitting out for the fisheries, but the one most often followed is for the owner of a vessel to charter her to ten or fifteen men on shares, he finding the stores and the nets and the men paying for the provisions, hooks and lines and for the salt necessary to cure their proportion of the fish.

The crew of a banker is usually composed of a dozen to eighteen men, including the skipper, or captain, who exercises no direct control over the others, but is recognized by them as the principal personage on board. The average Gloucester fisherman is a splendid though rough specimen of an American. You may know him by his free-and-easy manner and his swinging gait. His costume when at work is a red or blue flannel shirt of the thickest material, admirably adapted to absorb and exclude the chilling fogs in which he passes so much of his time, a heavy tarpaulin or sou'wester, generally his own handiwork, pilot-cloth trousers and heavy cowhide boots completing his attire. His face bespeaks a serious but cheerful and contented spirit, the result of a philosophical, half careless dependence upon luck.

Generous and fearless in his address, he is of simple and economical habits and, like most men of large stature, almost peculiar in a placid good humor which seldom leaves him. Always ready for any fortune, the fisherman tries to look upon the bright side of life and draw whatever there may be of pleasure from his hazardous calling. But among the bankers are occasional roystering, devil-may-care fellows, whose never ending practical jokes and offhand manner serve to enliven the little vessel and dispel the tedium of the voyage to the Banks.

The Grand Bank extends north and south about six hundred miles and east and west some two hundred, lying to the southeast of Newfoundland. Its shape cannot be easily defined, but the form denoted by the soundings give it somewhat the resemblance of New Holland. To the southward it narrows to a point, presenting abrupt edges, which in some places drop into almost fathomless water. This, as well as the adjacent banks of St. Pierre, Bank Querau and the Flemish Cap, abound with fish of various kinds, which at stated seasons adopt this as a shoaling place or grand rendezvous. The most numerous of these are the cod, which thrive here so amazingly that the unceasing industry of many hundreds of vessels through two centuries has in no way diminished their numbers. The fishery is not confined to the Banks, but extends to the shores and harbors of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton. The fish affect sandy bottom. In winter they retire into deep water, but in March and April reappear and fatten rapidly from the time of their arrival on the Banks.

Fishing begins as soon as the smacks reach the Banks. In other years all cod were caught by means of handlines, and some fish are still taken that way. The most, however, are now taken by trawls, which were introduced about 1860 and were first used by the French. A trawl consists of a line some 3,000 feet in length, to which are attached short ones about a yard long, on each of which is a hook. The short lines are placed about six feet apart, so that each trawl has about 500 hooks. Attached to each end of the line by a rope is a buoy, sometimes only an empty powder keg or a mackerel kit. In the head of the buoy is a pole three feet long, upon which is a small flag to attract the attention of the owner when in search of it. To each end of the line is fastened a small anchor.

The hooks are baited with squid, herring or other small fish, if they can be secured. To bait a trawl requires from an hour and a half to two hours. When it is ready it is placed in a tub made of a half barrel. The long line is coiled up in the center and the bait lies next to the sides of the tub. One man uses from two to six trawls, which are usually visited in a dory very early each morning and once or twice during the day. When one buoy is reached the end of the trawl to which it is attached is drawn up, the hooks examined and the fish taken off. By means of trawls a man may catch more in a single night than by a week's hard work with hand lines.

Each man keeps tally of his fish as he hauls them in to the dory by cutting out the tongues-the number of tongues giving the account of the fish taken. As soon as the day's catch has been taken aboard the schooner the crew divide themselves into throaters, headers, splitters, salters and packers, and the operation known as splitting and salting begins. The business of the throater is to cut with a sharp pointed knife across the throat of the fish to the bone and rip open the bowels. He then passes it quickly to the header, who with a sudden wrench pulls off the head and tears out the entrails, passing the fish instantly to the splitter. At the same time separating the liver, he throws the entrails overboard. The splitter with one cut lays the fish open from head to tail and with another cut takes out the backbone. After separating the sounds, which are placed with the tongues and packed in barrels as a great delicacy, the backbone follows the entrails overboard. Such is the amazing quickness of the operations of heading and splitting that a good workman will often decapitate and take out the entrails and backbone of six fish in a minute. After the catch has been washed off with buckets of pure water from the ocean the fish are passed to the salters and thence to the packers in the hold. The task of the salters is a most important one, as the value of the voyage depends upon their care and judgment. They take the fish one by one, spread them, back uppermost, in layers, distributing a proper quantity of salt between each. Packing in bulk, or "kench," as the fishermen term it, is intrusted only to the most experienced hands.

When the day's catch has been cared for in the manner just described the watch is set and all but two men turn in. These watches are regulated in such a manner that every man is on deck his part of the night hours. Breakfast is served at 3 o'clock in the morning, and off the men go again to their trawls. If it is foggy dinner is announced by the report of a ten-pound gun from the schooner. It is then about 10 o'clock. After dinner the fishers are away again and back about 4, when the fish which have been caught are split and salted as on the previous day. The only thing that relieves the monotony on board a Gloucester fishing smack is stormy weather or the coming of Sunday. This day is kept holy.

Leaving the Grand Banks, let us cross over to the Georges Banks, where in the months of spring and summer we shall find Gloucester hand-liners, with crews of from eight to ten men fishing for mackerel. Every man is at the rail, as he fishes from the deck of the vessel. The tide runs so strong that nine-pound leads are necessary. Attached to each lead is a horse, a slingding, or spreader, and a pair of large hooks. Sometimes when fishing in thirty fathoms of water the great strength of the tide forces the men to pay out from sixty to ninety fathoms of line before the lead touches bottom. In front of each man, driven into the rail, is a wooden pin. This is termed the soldier, and it has an important duty. Every inch of the line is hauled across it. Were it not for these rail pins the lines would continually be fouled with one another.

When a smack's crew chance upon a fresh school of mackerel their hooks have only to touch the water to be seized and swallowed. No time is lost in unhooking, but each fisherman hauls as fast as his hands can move until the fish appears in sight, when with one motion he is swung quickly over the rail into a barrel or heap and so dexterously that the hook disengages itself. When the fish continue plentiful the scene is a most exciting one. The long, lithe bodies of the fishermen eagerly bending over their work, the quick, nervous twitching at the line, followed by the steady strain, the rapid hand-over-hand haul that brings the prize to the surface, the easy swing with which he describes a circle in the air as the victor slaps him into his barrel and the flapping of the captives about deck, mingling with the merry laughter of the excited crew, make it a sport to which the efforts of the trout angler or the fowler with his double-barreled shotgun are but puny and insignificant in comparison.

Time was when the use of the hook and line made mackerel catching the very poetry of fishing, but in recent years the purse seine has come into general use. Mackerel seining, however, is an interesting process. A large seine is two hundred and fifty fathoms in length and about fifteen or twenty fathoms deep. The school is sighted from the masthead and the direction in which the fish are swimming is noted. A boat is manned and sets out to head off the school. Two men in a dory hold one end of the purse line which runs through rings at the bottom of the seine. A circle is described by the boat, the seine being thrown out at the same time. When the boat meets the dory the other end of the line is taken into the boat. Then the seines are drawn together, forming a large bag. The fish are inside and it is necessary to gather as much of the net into the boat as possible. The fish are then in what is termed the bunt. This is the strongest part of the seine. The vessel sails up close to the boat, picks up the outside corks and the bailing begins, a dip net that will hold a barrel being used for this purpose, after which the fish are cleaned, salted and stowed in the hold. Vessels have been known to take 300 barrels in one haul, but the average catch nowadays is about twenty-five barrels.

When the mackerel fleet fished with hand lines the pursuit of this industry was exciting in the extreme. Often when massed together in great fleets the vessels carried away their mainbooms, bowsprits, jibbooms and sails by collision in what was really a hand-to-hand encounter and when the maneuver of lee-bowing was the order of the day. A fleet of sixty odd sail descry a schooner whose crew are heaving and pulling their lines. The glistening scales of the fish sparkle in the sunlight. The fleet as one vessel turns quickly on its heel and there is a neck-and-neck race for the school. The first that arrives rounds to under the lee of the fortunate craft, the crew heaving the toll bait with lavish hands.

The new arrival now shakes up into the wind close under the lee bow of the fish-catching vessel. The fish forsake the latter and fly at the lines of the newcomer. Now comes up the balance of the fleet, and each vessel on its arrival performs the same maneuver and lee-bows its predecessor. Those to windward, forsaken by the fish, push their way through their neighbors, fill away and round to under the bows of those to leeward. The hoarse bawling of the skippers to their crews, the imprecations of those who have been run down and left disabled, rend the air, while the crews, setting and lowering sail and hauling fish, freely exchange with each other language not to be found in any current religious work. In these latter days, however, seines, as before stated, have taken the place of line, and lee-bowing, with its attendant excitement and danger, has passed to the limbo of forgotten things.

Fishing smacks bound for the Georges, the Western, or Banks of Newfoundland may be gone three or four weeks, bringing their fish to market on ice, or they may be absent from four to six months, dressing and salting their fish on board. But, be the voyage long or short, it is a joyous and moving spectacle to see a schooner come into Gloucester from the Banks loaded to the scuppers and packed to the beams with codfish. The wharf is lined with eager spectators as she glides up to her dock with a leading wind. The foresail comes in and the mainsail is lowered and handed by a crew weatherbeaten and clumsily limber in heavy Cape Cod seaboots, sou'westers and oiljackets. Then the jib downhaul is manned and a number of boys, longing for the day when they can go to the Banks, catch the hawsers and make her fast to the pier fore and aft.

Amidst a storm of questions asked and answered on both sides, the crew range themselves on board and on shore with one-tined pitchforks and proceed to unload with the rapidity and regularity of machinery. The men in the hold heave the fish on deck, whence they are tossed to the wharf. Another turn of the pitchfork lands them under the knife, their heads and tails come off and they are split open in a second and are then salted and spread upon flakes to dry. These flakes are frames covered with triangular slats and are about seven feet wide and raised three feet above the ground. At Gloucester they may be seen not only upon the wharves, but also in all vacant places between the houses and even in the front dooryards, so that at every turn the smell of codfish regales the passerby.

But there is a sadder, sterner side to the life of the Gloucester fishermen than which I have been describing. Danger is their constant, death their familiar, companion, and each season has its sorrowful story of storm, wreck and disaster. Truth to tell, the perils of the trawler are even greater than those of the soldier in battle. He is often four or five miles from his vessel, when suddenly the thick fog closes in upon him and he is lost, perhaps to row for days in hopeless search, without food, drink or compass. He may die of exhaustion or perhaps be picked up at length by a passing vessel and taken to some distant port. More than thirty lives were lost in this way in the summer of 1894. Although horns are blown in warning, a whole crew is sometimes sunk in an instant by some steamer on its way across the ocean. Of all the men lost on the Banks during the last twenty years more than two-thirds have been out in dories attending trawls.

Fierce, too, are the storms which sweep the Banks in winter. Then the wind is bitter cold, deck and mast and sails are clad in ice, and many a crew are never heard of more. The Georges in fair weather is not dangerous fishing ground, but in a gale it defies both skill and strength. The shallow water is churned into rolling mountain waves which almost sweep the ocean bed. At such times the 125-ton fishing vessels, which usually anchor close together when fishing, are at the mercy of the elements. It is impossible for the anchors to get a firm grip and they are sometimes dragged for miles. This, in fact, is the greatest danger of the business. Not infrequently in a heavy gale two or three vessels will drift together, their cables become tangled until they are unmanageable and in short order vessels and crew will be engulfed. Some years ago thirty schooners, with 150 sailors aboard, were lost in this manner in a single gale on the Georges.

Since 1830 nearly 700 fishing vessels sailing from Gloucester have been lost and upward of 2,700 men have perished. The winter of 1882 was one long to be remembered in Gloucester, for in less than two months more than a hundred fishermen were lost on the Banks. One of these was Angus McCloud, than whom no braver man ever found a grave at the ocean's bottom. Three years before he had been on the Banks in the same vessel with his brothers, Malcolm and John McCloud. Among their shipmates were the McDonalds-William, Donald, John and Neal. Their vessel was in the gale of 1879 on the Banks-a gale the like of which had rarely before been experienced by the fleet. Thrown over on its beam ends, the little bark still held to its anchor and finally rode out the gale with her crew lashed in the rigging. Nearby was another vessel in the same position, and others were being tossed about to windward and to leeward. Two poor fellows, washed from one of the former, were swept between the two vessels that had been knocked down and were not one hundred feet from either. The crews of these vessels, clinging to the icy rigging, looked anxiously from one to another to see if any one was bold enough to attempt a rescue. Angus McCloud cast off the lashings which bound him, seized a lanyard, made it fast about his waist and stood for a moment poised on the shroud lashings. Then he sprang boldly into an advancing wave and was carried toward one of the struggling men. Soon he had him by his oilskin coat and soon the crew were hauling them in. Angus assisted in the rescue of another comrade before the gale was spent and his vessel righted.

Time and again other members of the Gloucester fishing fleet have proved themselves worthy comrades of Angus McCloud. Several years ago Captain Mark Lane, now dead, but then skipper of the schooner Edwin, while homeward bound from the Banks discovered two shipwrecked men on a half-submerged rock near the Fox Islands, on the Maine coast. It was midwinter and a heavy gale was blowing, but Captain Lane put his wheel hard down, brought his vessel up into the wind, hove to under a close-reefed foresail and told his men they must rescue the sailors on the rock. It was a perilous undertaking and, as there appeared to be no chance of a boat living in the sea then running, the crew protested. "Then I'll go myself," said the skipper. "Stand by, there, lads, to lower away a boat from the davits!" But the crew relented when they saw that their captain was determined and two stout fellows drove a dory over the huge waves to the rock. The men were saved, and a certificate of the Humane Society of Massachusetts, still treasured by Captain Lane's family, attests that a careful examination into his conduct had proved him worthy the recognition of that admirable body.

The experience of the Gloucester fishermen in the winter of 1882 was by no means an unusual one. In the last twenty years over a thousand of them have laid their bones on the drifting sands of the fishing banks. During a hurricane in 1876 on the Banks almost an entire fleet was disabled or lost and 200 men were drowned. The wind, which had been blowing a gale from the southeast, veered suddenly to west-northwest. Skipper Collins of the schooner Howard, one of the vessels that escaped, had a remarkable experience. His vessel was "hawsed" up by the current, which set strongly to the southward and nearly at right angles to the hurricane. He had just time to tie up the clew of his riding sail-a sort of storm trysail-and lash the bottom hoops together, thus making a "bag reef," when the hurricane burst with terrific force upon the little vessel. A heavy sea boarded the schooner and carried off one of the sailors. Later on, while standing on the bit head of the fife rail and grasping the riding-sail halyards ready to let it run if necessary, a ball of lightning burst between the masts and knocked the captain insensible to the deck, whence he was dragged below by his crew. The lightning severely burned his right arm and leg and disappeared through his boots.

During the same storm the schooner Burnham was struck so suddenly and with such violence by a sea as to turn her bottom up and throw her skipper, James Nickerson, and his crew, who were below, upon the ceiling, where they lay sprawling for a moment until the vessel righted herself. There was one man on deck when she was struck, Hector McIsaac. He saw the wave coming and leapt into the shrouds. With his legs locked in the ratlines he went down into the foaming sea, and when the crew came on deck there was Hector McIsaac still clinging to the shrouds. Captain Nickerson was subsequently lost in a dory from the Bellerophon on the Banks, and Hector McIsaac went down in the Nathaniel Webster in 1881, together with his brother.

Everybody who lives in Gloucester is interested in the fishing industry, and so it falls out that the city's life is about equally made up of intervals of joy and sorrow. When summer opens the general tone of public feeling is bright and hopeful, but at the end of the season, as the fishers come in, some with flags at half-mast, others bearing fateful news, the whole town is depressed. All the residents show a concern in the sailors who are lost and in the welfare of their families. Even citizens of fortune who suffer no personal bereavement have been brought closely into touch with the poor fishing families through repeated tragedies at sea. The scenes in the fishing quarters during the late fall and winter months when news of death is brought by almost every returning boat are most pathetic. Sometimes the news comes with a shock, at others wives and children wait for weeks in anxiety and never know the details of the fate of their loved ones.

The immediate wants of the families of lost sailors are looked after by the Gloucester Relief Association. Almost everybody in the town subscribes to this, rich and poor alike, as well as the sailors living along the shore and in Nova Scotia, all of whom sail in the Gloucester vessels. When there is a disaster the nearest relatives of the men lost receive a sum proportionate to the amount which the subscribers have paid into the association. In addition, voluntary subscriptions are made by churches and societies in Gloucester and Boston once a year and distributed at the time of the annual memorial service in February.

This service held in the city hall of Gloucester is unique in its way. Everybody in the city takes an interest in it and, with shops closed and business suspended, the day is one of general mourning. But neither death nor its solemn reminders can rob the boy born and bred in Gloucester of hunger for the time when he, too, may hazard life and fortune on the distant fishing grounds; and gray Mother Ocean, kindly and cruel by turns, claims him for her own, singing to-day of his hardihood and to-morrow-chanting his requiem.

* * *

Work on an ocean steamship never ends, for no sooner does she reach her moorings in New York, Liverpool or Hamburg than preparations begin for the next voyage. Her decks are holystoned, sprinkled with sand and made beautifully clean; the outside of her hull, from deck to water line, is repainted and, if it be the end of a round trip or voyage, all the exterior paint work receives a new coat, while her sanitary and plumbing arrangements, her smokestacks, woodwork, spars and rigging are all carefully examined and overhauled.

All this is done by the sailors under the direction of the boatswain, who reports each day to the officer on duty and receives instruction as to the work to be performed.

Meanwhile an overhauling equally minute and thorough is going on in the engineer's department, which includes not only the engines and boilers, but also the electric-lighting plant of the ship. The work of this department, however, is so arduous while at sea that officers and men receive liberty for the entire time the ship remains in port, their places being taken by a special shore force which remains aboard until sailing day. One boiler is left untouched to supply power for the engines that work the electric and refrigerating apparatus, the pumps and the machinery used in shipping cargo, but all the others as soon as they have cooled are entered, examined and, if need be, repaired. Each tube, combustion chamber and furnace receives careful attention; cylinders, pistons, crankpins and crossheads are gone over one by one, while the engines are generally overhauled and all the arrangements of the fireroom inspected. Nor is the steward's department less busy while in port. All the bed and table linen used during the voyage, many thousands of pieces, is collected and sent to the company's laundry, after which all the staterooms are cleaned and put in order and the fresh supply of linen made ready for the coming voyage.

During a steamship's stay in port the three chief divisions, sailing, engineer's and steward's, are under the jurisdiction of shore officials whose officers are on the deck. The sailing department is responsible to the marine superintendent, the engineer's to the superintending engineer and the steward's to the port steward. Thus the vessel while in port has no direct communication with the company's office, the dock superintendents acting as intermediaries. When stores are sent to the ship they are addressed to the department for which they are intended. The port steward controls the direct purchasing of provisions and is supposed to buy in the cheapest and best market. The marine superintendent and superintending engineer furnish the other materials required. Should provisions be found unsatisfactory when received the chief steward sends them back, and in such action is always upheld by the port steward. The cargo is in charge of the sailing department and is received and stowed under the direction of a boss stevedore selected by the dock superintendent.

Even the fleetest ocean steamships carry considerable cargoes, and to those unfamiliar with it the process of loading a vessel is a sight full of interest. On the wharf assorted merchandise by the carload is being lifted from vans and piled near the ship, and teams by the score are adding their quota to the immense mass, while on the water side lighters laden with more merchandise are either fastened to the vessel's side or anchored close at hand waiting to hoist their contents aboard. Engines are puffing, ropes are tugging and derricks lifting heavy freight of every kind to the ship's deck, the orders of the stevedore and the answers of his men mingling with the general din. Large vessels have four or five holds and much skill is required to properly stow the cargo in them, grain, from its compact and dead weight, being mostly reserved for the center of the vessel, while cured provisions are packed as far forward and aft as possible for their better preservation from the heat of the ship's fires. In many vessels carrying passengers as well as freight the heaviest weight is stowed in the lowest hold; this is to steady the ship and is called in the argot of the stevedore "stiffening" the ship. It requires about 1,500 tons to "stiffen" an ocean steamship of the largest size, and when this is done the hold is battened down and work begun on the next.

An important feature in the loading of a steamship is her coal. It is customary to take as high as 200 tons of a surplus over the actual needs of the voyage, and the bunkers of the vessel are in charge of a special gang of men. Some vessels load their coal over all, but a majority receive it through openings at the sides. Large V-shaped pockets, running direct to the bunkers, are let down on each side and around them are built stagings on which a couple of men are stationed to dump the coal from huge buckets hoisted by engines from lighters. On the wharf side the coal is wheeled in barrows up a shelving gangway and turned into the bunkers direct. To load a great vessel requires the services for several days of 125 men, including a boss stevedore and a couple of foremen and with all the appliances of steam and gearing to assist their operations. The force is divided into half a dozen or more gangs, each having its head, who is in communication with the boss stevedore. As the work is intermittent the men are paid by the hour, and there is a keeper who does nothing else but take down the time each one is employed. Certain gangs of longshoremen stick to certain lines, and many of them have worked nearly all their lives for the same company. When the loading of a ship is completed a detailed inspection of cargo is made by one of the officers, and for this reason the boss stevedore is always careful to prevent slovenly methods on the part of his men, being aware that in the end he will be the one held responsible for haste or error.

While the cargo is being received and loaded stores for the coming voyage are also being taken aboard. The supplies for the physical comfort and necessities of 1,500 persons on a ship can be measured only by the ton, 30,000 pounds of beef, for instance, being often used on a single voyage. About 150 tons of water are required for cooking and drinking, an additional fifty tons being made daily on board by the evaporators from sea water and used for cleaning purposes. When it comes to food and drink the ingenuity of the port and ship's stewards is put fairly to the test. A day or two before the ship leaves port the number of passengers who will probably sail on it is figured up and the ship's steward makes up and hands to the port steward a tabulated list of the supplies needed for the trip, nearly 1,000 articles being named in the requisition, which includes food and drink in every conceivable form. The port steward sends his orders to the firms that supply the line and arranges for the delivery of the goods at certain hours, care being taken that they shall arrive when the pier is not blocked with wagons unloading freight. The meats come at a certain hour, the groceries at another and the spices and so on at another, everything being weighed on scales at the pier and counted as it goes on board.

The variety of the food supplies required for one of these huge floating hotels is bewildering. For example, no less than fifteen kinds of cheese are used, while fish in fully a hundred grades and forms is stowed away. In the list of fruits, fresh, dried and canned, there are at least 125 varieties, and the same is true of vegetables. The list of supplies, moreover, must be scanned by the steward again and again, for it will not do to overlook a single article that may be needed. Here is part of what is required in the way of supplies when a ship like the Carmania is crowded: 25,000 to 30,000 pounds of beef, 5,000 pounds of mutton, 2,600 pounds of veal, pork and corned beef; 8,000 pounds of sausage, tripe, calves' head, calves' feet, sweetbreads and kidneys; 2,000 pounds of fresh fish, 10,000 clams and oysters, 250 tins of preserved fruit, 200 tins of jam and marmalade, 100 large bottles of pickles and sauces, 500 pounds of coffee, 250 pounds of tea, 250 pounds of potted fish, 300 fresh lobsters, 3,000 pounds of moist sugar, 600 pounds of lump sugar, 500 quarts of ice cream, 3,000 pounds of butter of various grades, 16 tons of potatoes, 5 tons of other vegetables, 15,000 eggs, 1,000 chickens and ducks, and 2,000 birds of different kinds. Lard by the ton is used and often as many as 140 barrels of flour are consumed.

The departure of an ocean liner from port is a critical moment for each member of the ship's company. All leaves of absence expire twenty-four hours before the time for sailing, and this precaution makes it certain that every man shall be at his post. At 8 o'clock on the morning of leaving the sea-watches are formally set. The lower fires in the many-lunged furnaces have been started at 10 o'clock on the previous night; six hours later the top fires are lighted, and at 6 A. M. the operation of getting up steam begins, it being always necessary to have a full pressure of steam at least one hour before sailing time. As the moment of departure draws nearer, an air of suppressed excitement pervades the waiting throng, but there is no confusion among those charged with the ship's conduct and safety. Each officer is at his post, and knows his duty. The chief officer is stationed on the forward deck in full view of the captain on the bridge, where the latter with a wave of his hand indicates just what he wants done. The senior and junior second officers are on the after deck; the extra second with the captain on the bridge, and the third and fourth officers at the forward and after gangways.

Meanwhile, as the minutes wax and wane, winches chatter noisily; windlasses clink musically; capstans rattle with slacking cables; and the shrill chanty songs of the docking gang working the warps, answer the cheery "Yo-heave-oho" of the sailors on the deck. On the bridge with the silent yet impatient captain lingers a representative of the company. By and by, after the final instructions have been given, this person departs, and as he goes over the side the captain, saluting him with a wave of the hand, gives a quiet order to the first officer. The wheel is shifted, the capstan reels noisily, and link by link the chain comes home. At last, after a vicious tug or two on the cable, the ground is broken, and, dripping with cleansing water from the hose, the anchor, ring and stock, appears above the foam-streams rippling at the bow. When the catfall is hooked, the ship swings easily around the jutting pier, the engines increase their speed, the ensign dips in answer to salutes, and a long blast from the whistle claims the right of the channel. Slowly and carefully she picks her way through the shipping that crowds the harbor, drops her pilot and heads for the open. The voyage has begun.

With the dropping of the pilot, sea routine is promptly taken up, and thereafter on the shoulders of the commander rests the preservation of the ship and the safety of the passengers and crew. Every captain of an Atlantic liner embodies in his person a shining example of the law of the survival of the fittest, for there is no short cut to the bridge, and none but a master seaman ever reaches it. The man who would be captain cannot crawl through the cabin window. He must fight his way over the bows, and struggle out of the ruck and smother of the forecastle, by sturdy buffeting and hard knocks, by the persistent edging of stout shoulders backed by a strong heart and an active brain. There is probably not a commander of an ocean liner who has not been around the world as a common sailor, a mate, and finally a master of a ship. In fact, it would be difficult if not impossible to get the command of a transatlantic ship without having first been the captain of a large sailing vessel. Some of the companies like the Cunard, have a rule requiring that a candidate for a captaincy shall have served as a captain somewhere; and only a few years ago a sailor on one of the largest steamships plying between New York and Liverpool, who had climbed from the bottom to the high rank of first officer, left the company with which he had made his progress solely that he might take a place as captain on a smaller and less important vessel. If he succeeds in his new berth-and his old employers will watch his course-it is more than likely that he will be called back in a few years and have a command given him.

It is the man who knows his business who makes his way to the bridge. No matter how gruff or unpopular he may be, or what are any of his personal peculiarities, if he understands his business and knows how to get smoothly over the sea, he is pretty sure of promotion. A captain, however, does not obtain on shipboard all the education which makes him capable of commanding a Lucania or a Paris. There must be much study of books as well. He must know something of the art of shipbuilding, of engineering; he must be familiar with the science of meteorology; he must be a master of the moods of the ocean, the currents and lanes as discovery has set them forth; he must have the mathematics of navigation completely under control, and he must have a general knowledge of the politics and laws of the high seas. Most important of all, he must be a man of courage and good judgment, for he must govern his crew more wisely, shrewdly and sternly than a general controls his army, and be prepared to withstand the attacks of nature's forces with as much skill and alertness as the leader of an army must show against a surrounding enemy. His responsibility never ends, not even when he is asleep. Sometimes the dangers which beset him forbid any attempt at sleep, and hour after hour the captain must stand upon his high bridge, exposed to all manner of storms. Often does a commander come into port from a perilous voyage, during which for two days and nights he has not left his bridge, except four or five times, and then only for a few minutes at a time.

There was a time when the captain was a prominent social figure on all ocean steamships, but this is no longer the case. He may be seen at his table in the saloon, when the weather is fine, or may be met on deck occasionally when he is looking over the ship, but at other times he is generally out of sight, except when he may appear on the bridge. The chief officer is seen most of all by the passengers. His principal duty is to look after the daily work of the crew, and he is about the deck constantly when not inspecting various parts of the ship. He takes an observation on the bridge with the other officers every day at twenty minutes before noon, but with that exception is seldom seen there. The other officers are in sight only when one looks up at the bridge. Indeed, on some of the newer ships they sleep and mess in quarters of their own on the shade deck, and, thus are rarely if ever brought in contact with the passengers.

THE CAPTAIN OF AN OCEAN LINER

On all the largest steamships there are besides a captain and chief officer, three second officers, one third and one fourth officer. The second officers are known as senior second, junior second and extra second, and each, like the chief officer, is a duly qualified master, capable of taking the ship around the world if need be. The general duty of the second officer is the navigation of the ship under the captain's directions. Each of these officers stands a four hours' watch on the bridge, and each during his tour of duty has, as the captain's representative, direct charge of the ship. The third and fourth officers stand a watch of six hours, alternating with each other, and, there are, therefore, always a second and third or fourth officer on watch at the same time. Although in rough weather it is work that tests the strength and tries the nerves of the strongest man, no officer can leave the bridge while on watch, and should he violate this rule, he would be dismissed at once. In addition to his watch the third officer has charge of all the flags and signals by night and day, and he also keeps the compass book, while the fourth officer, besides his work on the bridge, has charge of the condition of the boats.

Observations are taken every two hours, as on an ocean greyhound, rushing over the course between America and Europe at the rate of twenty miles an hour, it is of the first importance that the ship's position should be known at all times. Fog may come down at any moment, and observations not to be obtainable for several hours. The positions of more than one hundred stars are known, and by observing any of these the ship's whereabouts can be ascertained in a few minutes. Of course, the "road" becomes more or less familiar to a man who crosses the ocean along the same route year after year, yet this familiarity never breeds contempt or carelessness, for no man knows all the influences that affect the currents of the ocean, and while you will find the current in a given place the same forty times in succession, on the forty-first trip it may be entirely changed. Now and then a big storm that has ended four or five hours before a liner passes a certain point may give the surface current a strong set in one direction, and there is no means of telling when these influences may have been at work save by taking the ship's position at frequent intervals.

The ship's crew stand watch and watch, and in each watch there are three quartermasters who have charge of the wheel. Steering in the old days before the introduction of steam gear, was an arduous and too often perilous duty, but to-day, even in the roughest weather, a lad of twelve can easily manage the wheel, which is merely the purchasing end of a mechanical system that opens and shuts the valve governing the steam admitted to the steering cylinders. First-class ships number from twelve to fifteen men in each watch. A certain number of these must be able seamen, and none are allowed many idle moments. In the middle watches the decks are scrubbed; in the morning watches the paint work is overhauled and cleaned; and finally, when the weather permits, the brass work is polished until it is made as radiant as the midday sun. This scrubbing, burnishing and cleansing runs through every department, and in no perfunctory way, for each day the ship is inspected thoroughly, and upon the result hangs the possible promotion of the subordinates.

Once in every twenty-four hours the captain receives a written report from the first officer, the chief engineer and the chief steward, and at eleven o'clock in the forenoon of each day, accompanied by the doctor, he inspects all parts of the ship. Let us follow him, if he is gracious enough to give permission, in this daily visit to the underground realm ruled over by the chief engineer and steward. In the fleetest of the liners the engineer force numbers nearly two hundred men, divided, as a rule, into three crews, with a double allowance of officers for duty. An engineer keeps watch in each fire-room, and two are stationed on each engine-room platform. Watches depend upon the weather. In most cases, the force, officers and men, serve four out of twelve hours, but in foggy or stormy weather officers stand at the throttles with peremptory orders to do no other work. In relieving each other great care is taken; those going on the platforms feeling the warmth of the bearings, examining the condition of the pins and shafting, testing the valves, locating the position of the throttle, counting the revolutions, and by every technical trial satisfying themselves before assuming charge that all is right.

Distressing at all times is the lot of the poor fellows who man the stoke hole. On the Fürst Bismarck, for instance, there are twenty-four furnaces, manned by thirty-six brawny and half-naked stokers. Suddenly from somewhere in the darkness comes three shrill calls upon a whistle, and instantly each furnace door flies open, and out dart hungry tongues of fire. With averted heads and steaming bodies, four stokers begin to shovel furiously, while two others thrust their slice-bars through each door and into the mass of fire and flame. Burying their lances deep in the coals, they throw their weights full upon the ends as levers, and lift the whole bank of fire several inches. Then they draw out the lances, leaving a black hole through the fire into which the draft is sucked with an increasing roar. Three times they thrust and withdraw the lances, pausing after each charge to plunge their heads in buckets of water, and take deep draughts from bottles of red wine. But this cooling respite lasts only a moment at best, for their taskmasters watch and drive them, and each furnace must do its stint. It is fair, however, to say that everything that can be done to lessen the hardships of the stoke-hole has been done by the steamship companies. The best quality of food is given the stokers, and they are allowed double rations of wine and kummel four times a day, practically all they care to drink.

The chief engineer of an ocean steamship is fairly well paid, and he deserves to be, for fidelity and merit lead to the engine-room as they do to the bridge, and mastery of the former presupposes long years of exacting service in subordinate positions. Indeed, many of these officers have given their best years to one employ, and, like the hardy McAndrews sung by Kipling, deserve much of it in every way. Some of the old chiefs are the greatest travelers in the world, so far as miles may count. One of whom I was told has traversed in the service of one company more than 900,000 shore miles, a distance four times that between the earth and the moon; and still higher is the record of another, who completed before his retirement 154 round trips, making in distance over 1,000,000 statute miles.

The captain in his daily tour scrutinizes every nook and corner of the engineer's department, and not less scrupulous is his inspection of the domain in which the chief steward holds sway. There is good reason for this, since, as far as the comfort of the passengers is concerned, the chief steward is the most important person on board a liner, having charge of the staterooms, dining-room, storerooms and kitchen. Like the engine-room the ship's kitchen, located amidships, is an unknown world to most of the passengers. There are, as a matter of fact, three kitchens, besides a serving-room. The soups, fish, meats and vegetables are prepared and cooked in one room and the bread and pastry in another, while the steerage has a kitchen to itself in which all the cooking is done by steam. Space being valuable, all these rooms are small, and meals for 500 or 1,000 people are cooked in an apartment no larger than the kitchen in a low-priced flat, or the pantry in a country house. This makes it necessary to keep everything in its place, and it amazes one to see how compactly the ship's supplies can be arranged. Nothing is left down on shelves or in drawers which may be hung on hooks, and even the platters and serving dishes are made to hang, there being a loophole at one end for this purpose.

Moreover, what the ship's kitchen loses in size is made up in the number of storerooms. Far aft is the main storeroom, which, with its bins reaching from floor to ceiling, and its racks overhead, looks like a wholesale grocery store.

Close at hand is the wine locker, a long place, lined with narrow shelves, which have an upward tilt and are crowded with all sorts and kinds of bottled liquors. Down deeper, most often where the stern rolls in from the counter, is a big compartment, where are stored barrels of flour, potatoes, vinegar and beer, which when needed are hoisted up under the direction of the storekeeper. Pretty well forward is the refrigerating plant, a zinc-lined chamber, where the choicest sides of beef, joints of mutton, chickens and turkeys are kept frozen. All the liners, it may be noted in passing, carry a butcher, whose duty it is to cut the steaks and chops, and to see that no good material goes to waste through unskillful hacking.

Adjoining the kitchen is the serving-room or pantry, frescoed with silver coffee-pots and cream-mugs and lined with shelves filled with crockery, while the hook-dotted ceiling glitters with an hundred other pieces of silverware which swing and scintillate with every motion of the ship. The shelves are really wooden pockets, faced with strips of wood, which keep the dishes from rolling out, and stowed away there are cups and plates by the hundred. Along the side of the room is a big hot press, having on its top all manner of indentations for the trenchers, saucepans and soup pots which are sent in from the kitchen laden with food at mealtime. This is flanked by a line of glistening tea and coffee urns, while in a convenient corner is a roomy icebox for the cold meats and butter.

To the kitchen and the pantry the storeroom is always sending tribute, and they send it to the glass-doored dining-room which, with its long tables, its dazzling white cloths, and its glittering array of silver and glass, looks at night like an enchanted realm. Seats at table are assigned by the steward or the purser, who gives out the seats to those who ask for them first. Each seat is numbered and the passenger receives a billet with his seat number on it when he goes to his first meal on board. Formerly there was a struggle for seats at the captain's table, but now the wise and wary ones rally about the purser and the doctor, for the commander's duties seldom permit him to go below save at dinnertime. Still, wherever his place at table may be fixed, the cabin passenger finds that no opportunity is neglected to serve his comfort and lighten the tedium of the voyage. On the German lines a band accompanies every vessel, and plays through the long first-cabin dinner, and again on deck in the evening. All German and American holidays are observed on these boats, and when Christmas comes to the travelers at sea, they find themselves in the midst of a Fatherland festival, the chief feature of which is a brightly adorned and illuminated tree. Nor are the steerage passengers forgotten on these occasions, amusements, and a special feast being provided for them.

On the boats of the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique French festivals and American holidays are celebrated by concerts, balls, dinner parties and extra luxuries at the regular meals. Entertainment is provided for the steerage passengers and a special menu is furnished for the festal days. On such occasions, too, the ships are gayly decorated with bunting from stem to stern. The "captain's dinner" is another pleasant feature of the voyage on a French liner. This takes place just before the end of the voyage and is regarded as a token of good will between the passengers and the ship's company. Champagne is furnished without extra charge at this dinner and toasts and speechmaking follow. On a British liner on Sunday morning the captain, in full uniform, supported by his officers, reads the Church of England service, to which all are invited, while American and British holidays are observed in a fitting manner, the ship being always "dressed" for the occasion. The boats of the British lines have also a concert for the exploitation of the talent on board and a parting dinner given an evening or two before arrival in port.

Meantime how do the steerage folk get on when voyaging over the western ocean? Here there is another and different story to tell. In a ship like the Britannic of the White Star line, picture to yourself a barn-like apartment some seventy feet long and thirty feet wide, but tapering almost to a point at the forward end. It is dimly lighted and badly ventilated by means of a shaft, through which the mainmast enters, and by portholes which are too near the water ever to be opened except in harbor and are well nigh submerged when the vessel lies over or rolls. Lined along the three sides of this rude triangle are large skeleton frames, each upholding two tiers of coffin-like bunks, one above the other, the beds being placed side to side in rows of eight and end to end two deep. Thus each of these structures holds thirty-two bunks, whose sides and bottoms are of rough boards. A narrow passageway runs across ship between the pens, of which there are seven in all, making a total of 224 souls who are crowded into these sordid quarters. Picture this to yourself and you have before you the men's cabin of the steerage of the Britannic. The room being lighted at night by gasoline lamps, smoking is forbidden, while all relaxation must be taken on that small portion of the lower deck beyond which no steerage passenger is allowed to roam, for there is no means of amusement or recreation in the cabin.

Still there is a brighter side to the picture. All the companies provide ample and wholesome fare for their steerage passengers. No captain ever fails to include in his daily tour a personal and painstaking inspection of this department and he is always approachable in the event of complaints arising on the part of the humblest and poorest traveler. It is related of one old-time commander, Captain John Mirehouse, that in order to assure himself of the proper quality and preparation of the steerage food he invariably had his lunch served from the steerage galley at the dinner hour; and he used to declare that his lunches were as wholesome and palatable as he could desire. Nor is it to be supposed that steerage passengers are all immigrants, for, odd as it may seem, there are many world wanderers who cross and recross in the steerage, who travel over great parts of the world and who in their class are as independent as the men and women lodged in the first cabin. Besides these curious characters there are Scottish carpenters and other mechanics who come to America for a few months at a time to take advantage of higher wages and who return as they came when the Christmas holidays draw nigh. Often a liner leaving New York in the early days of December carries more than I,000 passengers in the steerage.

Whether you travel in the cabin or the steerage, the closing days of a voyage are always sure to be the shortest and the pleasantest ones. The routine of marine life ceases to be a burden, and with the disappearance of the last lingering cases of sea sickness life on the fleet greyhound of the waters becomes a source of joy. Newly found friends and glimpses of passing vessels cheer and break the solitude, while the tonic of the sea air courses like an elixir in the blood. Young couples flirt demurely in shady corners of the deck, whence issue now and again sudden bursts of rippling laughter; nor is there lack of jollity in the smoking room, whence eddy the flotsam and jetsam of the ship and cards rule the hour from early forenoon until the lights are turned out at night. If it be summer and the passage a westward one you may count, as a rule, upon skirting the Grand Banks without mishap and upon rounding the Georges in the same lucky manner. Then, after long and eager waiting, comes the happy hour when there is a cry of "Sail, ho," and a few minutes later a yawl emerges from the gathering darkness and a bluff, black-garbed pilot climbs to the ship's deck, bringing news from the outer world and the glad assurance that land and home are just beyond the horizon line.

Soon comes the welcome cry, "There she is, Fire Island light, right over the starboard bow." The watcher in the lighthouse telegraphs the steamer's arrival to the quarantine station and the ship news office, and long before noon the vessel reaches quarantine. Here the health officer boards her, and if it is found that she has no case of contagious disease on board she is permitted to proceed to her dock, which she reaches in about one hour and a half, including the time of examination. Meanwhile she has been met down the bay by a revenue cutter having a squad of customs officers on board and declarations have been made and signed by the cabin passengers as to the contents of their trunks, which are searched as soon as the vessel arrives at her dock. Here, also, an officer of the Immigration Bureau takes charge of the steerage passengers and has folk and baggage conveyed to the Barge Office for the examination which will impel their return to the place from which they came or end in the granting of permission for them to enter the land of mystery and promise.

Within the hour in which the liner reaches her moorings on the New York or Jersey shore the last passenger has taken his departure, shore leave has been granted to the majority of the ship's company and waiting hands have promptly taken in hand the task of making ready for the leviathan's next ocean pilgrimage, since, as I said at the outset, one voyage is no sooner ended than preparations for another are begun.

* * *

It is by no means an easy task to secure admission to the United States Navy, and of those who present themselves for enlistment in ordinary times about one man in a dozen is accepted. Landsmen furnish a great majority of recruits, and of these more come, it is said, from New York than any other city in the country. The candidate who presents himself on board of any one of the receiving ships constantly in commission for enlistment purposes is first put through a rigid oral examination designed to prove his mental and moral makeup.

If he passes this test the recruiting officer turns him over to the examining surgeon, by whom the discovery of the slightest physical defect is counted as sufficient ground for the candidate's rejection. If, however, he passes the doctor he is vaccinated and sent back to the recruiting officer, who swears him in for a three years' cruise, after which he is turned over to the paymaster's clerk to draw his uniforms and small stores.

A month of preliminary training on the receiving ship follows. Here he is put through the well-known "setting-up drill," which is designed to give the full use of the muscles and feet and to develop the agility and endurance necessary to the performance of ship duty. This exercise is of daily occurrence while the recruit is in the early stage of his enlistment and is practiced frequently during the entire period of service, being part of the drill of every ship's company. The recruit is also given practice in what is known as "the boat drill," and when opportunity offers in the manning and manipulation of the guns.

At the end of his first month comes the newly enlisted man's assignment to a vessel in active cruising service. Here, with a goodly batch of other landsmen, he is taken in hand by the master-at-arms, gets a ship's number and a mess kit, learns where to stow his clothing and hammock, and is part and parcel of the life on a man-of-war.

The recruit's first days on shipboard are apt to put his nerves and temper to the test, for the old-timers among the ship's company are sure to let pass no opportunity to bedevil and confound him. Calking mat is the name given to the piece of matting which the bluejacket spreads upon the deck when he wants to take a nap and which protects his uniform from being soiled. He buys it himself, but never a landsman went aboard his first ship that he was not told to go to the master-at-arms for a calking mat. Now, the average master-at-arms on a man-of-war is a man who, having been in the navy for half a lifetime, has ceased to find amusement in the calking-mat request preferred to him by several thousand recruits, and as a consequence the reception the newcomer gets when he approaches Jimmy Legs on this matter is liable to be a badly mixed affair of boots and language. Again, recruits are often sent to the officer of the deck to prefer absurd questions or questions on matters in which they have no concern. When one of these recruits walks up to the officer of the deck and, after a bow, innocently asks when the ship is to sail he is in for a speedy if disgraceful scramble forward. Or on his first day aboard a man-of-war the recruit is often told that in order to go below to his locker he must first get permission from the officer of the deck. "To my locker below, sir, may I go, sir?" he is told to say when he goes to the mast to ask for the desired permission. If the officer of the deck happens to be in good humor he will turn away to preserve his dignity by not smiling, but if his temper is on edge the recruit is in for a lesson in directness of language that will make him wish he had not thrown over his job ashore. Trials of this sort, however, soon have an ending. The average recruit quickly masters the marine ropes, and instances are not uncommon of clever landsmen who have finished their first three years' cruise as chief petty officers, drawing from $50 to $75 a month.

Besides the receiving ships regularly devoted to the enlistment of naval recruits on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts American warships are constantly shipping men, both in home and foreign ports, to fill gaps in crews. In this way many peculiar geniuses, men of really remarkable attainments along certain lines, gain admission into the navy as enlisted men. At Bangkok a few years ago an American man-of-war shipped a German as a messroom attendant. He was a fine-looking man of thirty and had little to say to his mates. One morning at sea soon after the German's enlistment a knot of officers gathered in the wardroom were discussing a difficult point in ordnance. The messroom attendant, who was watching out for the officers' needs, ventured to enter into the discussion. He did it, however, so quietly and respectfully and at once showed such perfect knowledge of the topic in hand that the officers found themselves listening to him with much interest. In five minutes the German had shown that there was no detail of the armament of the world's navies with which he was not familiar and that he was a past master in all matters pertaining to modern great guns. His proficiency in this respect being reported to the commanding officer, he was made a chief gunner's mate and was about to be a gunner when his time expired and he went to Germany, where he was employed by the Krupps as an ordnance expert. It came out that he had spent his life in the ordnance branch of the Krupp works and that he had been compelled to leave Germany suddenly on account of some trouble in which he had become involved. He had gone to Siam in the hope of getting an opportunity to rearrange the Siamese fortifications. Failing in this, and discouraged and penniless, he had shipped in the American navy.

"Once a sailor always a sailor" is not strictly true of men-of-warsmen of the American navy. Less than one-half of the men who complete one enlistment ship for a second three years' cruise, but a majority of the men who put in two cruises settle down to a lifelong continuance in the service, for when a bluejacket has passed one or two summers in the latitude of the North Cape and a couple of winters among the West Indies or in the South Pacific he is pretty sure to acquire a dislike for the climate of the United States that keeps him in the navy for good and all. Moreover, after a few years in the navy a bluejacket becomes possessed of the idea that he is really doing nothing aboard ship to earn his $16 a month and board.

Herein, however, he unconsciously proves himself a humorist, for the routine of life on a man-of-war is in reality a hard and laborious one. Reveille is sounded at daybreak, and the men who have not been on watch during the night turn out of their hammocks, lash and stow their bedding and get early coffee and biscuit. Then clothes are scrubbed, decks washed down and dried and the ship's side and boats cleaned, so that when the breakfast call is sounded at 7:30 o'clock most of her morning toilet has been made.

Breakfast over, the men light their pipes and loll at ease until the uniform of the day is announced, whereupon they array themselves in the garb prescribed and when the "turn-to" call has been sounded proceed to their several tasks. The days and even the hours and minutes of men-of-warsmen are allotted to special duties. Every day they are put through drill, sometimes with great guns, sometimes with cutlasses, sometimes with small boats and in many other ways. Moreover, arms and accoutrements have to be cleaned daily, the ordnance freed from rust and stain and the brasswork kept polished. While this is going on the bugle sounds the sick call and all who feel the need of the surgeon's care repair to the sick bay, after which a list of those unfit for service is furnished the officer of the deck, so that their duties can be attended to by their mates.

The morning is still young when the order comes, "Clear up the decks for inspection." Cleaning rags are put away, hands washed, an extra hitch given to the trousers, and then the call to quarters is sounded. The men go to their stations at the various guns, their officers appear and a swift inspection of their appearance is made, after which the several divisional officers report to the executive officer. The last named is armed with a list of those who are legitimately absent and checks off the absentees reported by the division officers. When this task is finished the executive reports to the captain, who is standing near and who then makes a tour of the ship, inspecting battery and crew. Following inspection comes some of the drills already referred to, dinner at noon, an hour for its discussion and smoking, and more drills during the afternoon, ending with the setting-up drill just before the bugle sounds for supper.

After that meal the men are at liberty to do very much as they please unless a searchlight or night signal drill happens to be scheduled for the evening. With 9 o'clock comes taps and the cry of the master-at-arms, "Turn in your hammocks and keep silence"-an order that must be obeyed, for on a man-of-war the sleep of the crew when the hour comes is a sacred thing and not to be disturbed.

The modern battleship is first of all a fighting machine, and that being the chief purpose for which it is created it is natural that the drill of "clearing ship for action" is one to which particular attention should be given. Following it always is a mimic encounter with an imaginary foe. Not the slightest detail in preparation is ever neglected and only blood and shrieks and wounds are lacking to make the imaginary battle as realistic as an actual one would be.

As soon as the cry of the boatswain's mate echoes from the main deck the bugle sounds the "assembly" on the gun and berth decks and the officers and men at once hurry to their allotted stations. Quiet is insisted upon; there is little confusion, and the swirling tide set in motion by the boatswain's call has no conflicting currents. So far as is possible each of the squads into which the ship's company is divided is berthed and messed in that section of the ship in which its duties will lie in the hour of battle. Thus on a battleship like the Virginia a portion of the first division improvises as soon as the call is sounded a breastwork for sharpshooters, using hammocks and awnings.

Meanwhile others of the same division rig collision mats, unship the railing around the forecastle, lower anchor davits in cradles and carry below and secure levers and tackles. At the same time other divisions lower and unship awning stanchions and railing in wake of the guns, close water-tight compartments, rig in and secure danger booms, unship ladders and supply fresh water for drinking purposes. Magazines are opened and lanterns trimmed, battle bucklers are fitted to air ports, and those detailed to attend speaking tubes in the wake of torpedo tubes go to their stations and receive and respond to the signals sent out from the central station. Nor is the surgeon's division less busy at this critical hour; its members convert the wardroom into a temporary operating room, remove rugs and curtains and see that the adjoining staterooms are made ready for the reception of the wounded. There is an enormous amount of work to be done before a ship can be got in readiness, but in little more than a half hour after the order is given the captain hears from his executive officer the report, "Ship is ready for action, sir." The gun crews, stripped to the waist, with their knotty muscles standing out in high relief, wait for the order to begin the fighting; and when it comes the great guns are elevated, depressed, concentrated and put through all the maneuvers possible in an actual battle. After this there is a moment's rest, and then, last of all, the order is given to repel boarders. The enemy is alongside and swarming over the bulwarks. The men in the tops pour down a murderous fire with rifles and Maxim and Gatling guns; headed by their officers, the men on deck, cutlass in one hand and revolver in the other, slash and hew, shoot and hack until the enemy turn tail and flee as fast as their imaginary legs can carry them. The ship is saved.

When at sea half of the crew of a man-of-war is always on duty and the other half taking a rest. The latter court their ease in many ways. Some stretch out on the hard deck and take a nap, others play checkers, spin yarns, write letters or read novels. Some are lost in reverie; all of them look careless and happy and nearly all of them smoke or chew tobacco. Music often claims a group of them at any hour of the day, and at night dancing is sometimes indulged in, always with wild delight. A stranger who strays into the forecastle observes that a few of its inhabitants wear double-breasted coats and linen collars. These are the men of rank before the mast and they are known as petty officers. The master-at-arms, the machinists and the yeoman are among the chief of these, and other petty officers are the boatswain's mates, gunner's mates and carpenter's mates. They are, comparatively speaking, high in rank above the rest of the crew and are treated accordingly by the latter. They have a mess table by themselves, presided over by the master-at-arms and adorned by glassware, crockery and napkins. All mess tables on a ship are large enough for ten or fifteen men to sit at and one of the company is selected by his mates to act as caterer. Meals are always well-behaved affairs, particularly at the tables of the petty officers, for the sense of rank is as keen before the mast as it is abaft among the commissioned officers. Every officer and man on a ship is subordinate or superior to somebody else and he cannot forget that his official relations even with his bosom companions are among the laws of the land. Nor do the exigencies of confined space interfere with this sense of rank. A bluejacket may have to dodge around an admiral and give orders under his nose, but there is still a gulf between them not to be bridged by any man.

In a visit to the forecastle among all the crowd there the youngest sailors and the apprentice boys are those that attract one the most. Their alert, intelligent faces give one a pleasant idea of the coming American man-of-warsman and attest the efficacy of the method employed to fit them for their future career. The present naval apprentice system of the United States has been in force since 1875. The candidate for an apprenticeship must be from fourteen to eighteen years of age, of robust frame, intelligent, of sound and healthy constitution and able to read and write. The boy who is found to be qualified signs an agreement to serve continuously until he is twenty-one years of age and is sent to the training station at Coaster's Harbor Island, near Newport, where is anchored a receiving ship capable of comfortably accommodating 500 apprentices. The boys sleep in hammocks, assist in keeping the ship clean and in various ways are gradually accustomed to a nautical life. The daily routine begins at 5:30, when reveille is sounded and all hammocks are lashed and stowed. After an early breakfast the boys wash their clothes, scrub decks and bathe, and then for about six hours are daily occupied with drills and studies, the course of instruction including gunnery, seamanship and English. The hours after supper until 9 o'clock, when all must be in their hammocks, and Saturday afternoons are given up to recreation. Many kinds of games are furnished the boys, and they have also free access to a good library.

Each apprentice on leaving Coaster's Harbor Island spends a year on a training ship and is then transferred to a regular man-of-war. Here his education is still continued, and the end of his enlistment generally finds him thoroughly acquainted with a modern ship and her armament and fitted to take the billet of a petty officer. Many of the apprentices who re-enlist are sent to the Washington Navy Yard for a six months' course of instruction in gunnery, a limited number being afterward detailed to the Naval War College at Newport for an equal length of time to be given a practical knowledge of electricity and torpedoes. They then graduate into the service with the rank and pay of seamen-gunners, and that the training they have received warrants its cost is proved by the assertion of experts that American gunners have not their superior in any navy of the world. The making of an American man-of-warsman is a process worth while.

A MAN-OF-WARSMAN

In peaceful times one day is very much like another on an American man-of-war, but there are four days of special importance in the calendar of the bluejacket serving thereon. These are general muster day, general inspection day and Thanksgiving and Christmas days. The first-named marks the observance of a ceremony of great importance to the participants-the reading of the articles of war or rules which have been framed for the government of the navy. Unlike other musters and routine drills which take place day after day with the utmost regularity, this function is observed not oftener than once a month. On most ships the first Sunday of each month is reserved for this purpose, but it frequently happens that two or three months elapse between one general muster and the next. Shortly before 10 o'clock in the morning of the day selected the chief boatswain's mate passes the order through the ship of "All hands to muster." At once every soul on the vessel except the sick and, if at sea, half a dozen others who cannot be spared from the wheel and engine room repairs aft to the quarterdeck, where the members of the crew range themselves in long ranks on the port side of the deck, facing the officers, who stand in a line on the starboard side, where they are placed according to rank, with the senior officer aft. All the officers are in full dress, with cocked hat and epaulettes and gold lace on coats and trousers, while the men must appear in their best, with shoes polished and clothes well brushed.

When the last straggler has taken his place the senior lieutenant, raising a white-gloved hand to his cocked hat, salutes the captain and informs him that all his officers and men are "up and aft." After this, by order of the officer of the deck, silence reigns. At a word from the commander the senior lieutenant begins to read the articles of war, and as he does so all heads are uncovered. Simple yet eloquent is this expression of the faith in which every naval officer must live. "The commanders of all fleets, squadrons, naval stations and vessels belonging to the navy," runs the wording of the first article, "are required to show in themselves a good example of virtue, honor, patriotism and subordination." The second article earnestly recommends all officers and seamen in the naval service diligently to attend on every performance of the worship of Almighty God. Further on is another article which informs every listener-and every one of the hundreds assembled is an intent listener-that "the punishment of death or such other punishment as a court-martial may adjudge may be inflicted on any person in the naval service who enters into a mutiny or who disobeys the lawful orders of his superior officer or who strikes the flag to an enemy or rebel." The same penalty awaits any one who in time of war deserts or who sleeps upon his watch, or who when in battle "displays cowardice, negligence or disaffection or keeps out of danger to which he should expose himself." These offenses are only a few of the many which all wearers of the uniform are enjoined not to commit. Some of the others are "profane swearing, falsehood, drunkenness, gambling, fraud, theft or any other scandalous conduct tending to the destruction of good morals;" and it also is forbidden to any one to be guilty of cruelty toward any person subject to his orders. Other parts of the articles contain similar injunctions to all in the navy to maintain the honor of the flag and the integrity of their lives.

As a fructifier of patriotism the importance of this ceremony cannot be easily overestimated. Lukewarmness has no place in its presence, and any one who witnesses it cannot fail to be impressed by its disclosure of a faith that one feels sure could remove mountains. In remote lands it is a rite which borrows added seriousness from its foreign surroundings. Its words have often echoed against the walls of foreign forts while a Sabbath calm has brooded over the latter and robbed them of their threatening aspect, and many a time during its performance American sailors have been able to look up from their quarter-decks to the cottages and fields of some other land where a different creed is held and with just as strong a faith as their own. No one can doubt that while this ceremony lives the country is stronger and safer than it would be without it.

The reading of the articles of war consumes a scant quarter hour. When it is finished the order is given and repeated by the boatswain's mate for all petty officers to muster in the starboard gangway. They form in two long ranks. At the end nearest the quarter-deck stands the master-at-arms and then come yeoman, writers, machinists, the apothecary, printer, painter, electrician, bandmaster, boatswain's mate, gunner's mates, quartermasters, oilers, water tenders and ship's corporals. The paymaster or his clerk starts to muster the crew, calling out each man's full name, and the latter answers with his rating. When the petty officers are all mustered they are allowed to leave and go forward-always being cautioned to keep quiet. Then follows a scene that reminds one of the early days of the navy-a custom more than a century old and borrowed originally from the English. It is called "going around the mast." When each man's name is called he answers with his rating, removes his cap, walks around the mast to the starboard side and goes forward. This is kept up until all seamen, ordinary seamen, landsmen, coal heavers, firemen and bandsmen have passed under the inspection of the captain, who stands near the mainmast intently watching and forming an opinion of each man as he passes before him. When all have gone forward the order is given by the executive officer to "pipe down," the shrill whistles sound and general muster is over.

General inspection day on a man-of-war usually follows close upon the termination of a foreign cruise and involves no end of labor on the part of officers and crew. In the early morning of the day appointed the last touches are given to the ship's bright metal work, the last rubs to its great brown guns. The decks are scrubbed and holystoned, so that the keen eye of the executive officer cannot find a spot. The bluejackets give a last turn to their hammocks and a last pat to their kits, for not a thing will escape the scrutiny of the board of inspection and survey. When the members of that body appear they find waiting for them on the main deck the whole crew, spick and span, with their kits, long canvas bags containing their white and blue clothing done up in neat rolls. While a part of the board examines these to see if any of the men have failed to roll them properly the other members go below to inspect the ship. They visit the wardroom, staterooms and forecastle; examine the water-tight compartments, the boilers, engines, bunkers and magazines and the wood and metal work, passing over no dark corner in gallery or pantry in which may lurk dirt or other signs of neglect.

All this, however, is preliminary to the real labors of the day, for when the members of the board of inspection have again assembled on deck comes the eagerly expected order, "Clear the ship for action!" Instantly the long roll is beaten, the boatswain's whistle sounds, and from the bowels of the ship the members of the crew come tumbling out, swarming over the deck in what seems the wildest confusion, but is in reality perfect order. Every man has certain duties and much drilling has taught him how to perform them in the simplest, readiest and easiest manner. The whole deck crew is organized into divisions and each division has its separate and particular work. One division lashes fast the big anchors and makes them as secure as possible. Another takes care of the boats. The spare spars are got out and lashed together. The boats are lashed into a nest, plugs pulled out so that they will fill with water and float with gunwales awash. The nest is lashed to the spars that will serve as a drag and a buoy to mark their location, and then spars and boats are put over the side and left to drift as they will.

While this is going on other divisions are at work with the rail and awning stanchions. Every thing comes down. The pegs are knocked out of the davit hinges and the big iron bars are folded over to the deck. Everything movable that can be put out of the way is stowed in its proper pace swiftly and silently. The battle gratings are brought out and fitted over the hatches. Any thing that might be knocked to pieces by a shell or shot to splinters by small fire is carried below, and when the work is finished not a superfluous bar or beam, not an extra rod, box, implement or article of any sort stands on the deck to cumber the desperate work of the ship in her life and death struggle.

At the same time the powder magazines are opened and the great guns swing around for action, shot and shell piled up about them. The tops are manned; every small gun is ready with its crew to hurl a deluge of missiles of all shapes and sizes; rifles, pistols and cutlasses are served out to the men, and in the space of time it costs to write these lines the ship lies at anchor ready to blow an adversary off the face of the water or to be blown off herself.

With the ship cleared for action, there is drill at the great guns and execution of the order to repel boarders. After this the ship is again put in condition and the bugle sounds to quarters. The ship's bell has struck the alarm for fire. In a trice long lines of hose are laid and men hurry around with their extinguishers on their backs. The "smotherers," with their hammocks, are ready for work, axmen are stationed to cut away woodwork and sentinels are posted prepared to flood the magazines. There is neither hitch nor break in the drill, and at its conclusion the men go to their well-earned noonday meal.

After dinner the marines are ordered to land and attack a distant fort. The boats are lowered away and provisioned for several days. Water, beef, beans, cartridges, rifles, guns and boxes of tools are stowed away in them, and then the men pile into them until it seems as if they must sink under their load. Many colored flags flutter from the mainyard of the big ship, the launches take the boats in tow and off they start. They do not go far, however, for soon a signal from the ship countermands the order to attack and they return and are hauled on board. Then comes a drill that is looked upon with regretful pride by the old tars who still love the shapely ships of the past and cannot overcome their dislike for the modern "teakettles;" it is a sail drill. The sailors scamper aloft, lay out on the big yards and soon the ship, with all sails set, is tugging at her anchors. Again the boatswain's whistle sounds. The executive officer, trumpet in hand, shouts his orders and the yards gradually come down until the ship is under close-reefed topsails. Then the sails are furled, the yards squared and the men wait for the next command. They do not have to wait long. A luckless man-imaginary, of course-falls overboard. There is another hurry and scurry, a life buoy is thrown to the drowning man, the cutter is lowered away and under the powerful strokes of six oars sweeps past the ship to the rescue. The man is saved and the cutter again hoisted on board. This ends the work of the day and all hands are piped to supper. Soon the sunset gun booms, once more the bugle sounds and the great striped flag at the stern comes down. General inspection day is over.

The crew of an American warship celebrate Thanksgiving day in the good old-fashioned style, which means that the dinner is made the chief incident. About this all the interest of the holiday gathers, and the feast is enjoyed in anticipation, in realization and in reminiscence. The expense of the extras which supplement the ordinary rations on that occasion is borne entirely by the men. Ordinarily Jack is a most improvident creature who sees no reason for worrying himself about what he is to eat to-morrow so long as he has enough for to-day, but for Thanksgiving and Christmas he makes unusual effort to save something to put into the common fund for the occasion. His comrades are generous, however, and if, as often happens, his pockets are light when the contributions are being taken up he is not allowed to miss the feast, but may have his share charged up against him, to be paid at a more convenient season.

One way in which the men save their money is by commuting their rations. The amount of food furnished by the government is extremely liberal, so that the daily ration provided for each sailor is more than he can eat under ordinary circumstances. The value of a daily ration is put at 30 cents. A common practice is for ten men to draw rations for only seven. If the mess consists of thirty men the value of the commuted rations would thus amount to $2.70 a day. This is multiplied by the time pay day comes around to a considerable sum and is paid back to the men with their wages. Part of it at a time like Thanksgiving is devoted to buying the luxuries of the dinner.

The fund kept or raised for this purpose has always been known as the "slush fund." The term dates back to the early days of the navy when the men were allowed to save the pork drippings and other grease, odd ends of rope and all kinds of waste about the ship and sell them to junk dealers for whatever they could get. "Slush" was the general name given to the waste stuff and the money which it brought in was the "slush fund." This disposition of the refuse is now taken out of the mens' hands, but they still continue to call their dinner fund by its ancient title.

A Thanksgiving dinner among the men-of-warsmen is a festivity well worth seeing. Nothing is done by halves, and the messroom decorations and the table furnishings would do credit to many a more pretentious assembly. The messrooms are brightly lighted up and their usually bare walls are gayly draped with American flags. Instead of the every-day enamel cloth the tables are covered with spotless white linen. If the ship is in port the celebration can be much more elaborate, because the men are then able to buy, beg or borrow from their friends on shore any number of ornamental articles with which to beautify the tables. Vases of flowers are artistically arranged about, and a great cake with a fanciful superstructure of icing is a favorite adornment. Enormous turkeys stand watch at each end of the tables at the beginning of the feast, but they disappear early in the action and their places are taken later by relays of mince and pumpkin pies. "Spuds," as all sailors call potatoes, are plentiful, affording ample proof of Jack's traditional fondness for this vegetable. Besides tea and coffee the only drink is beer. The men are allowed to have this not only on special occasions, by the way, but at any time when they have money to pay for it at the general canteen. At dinner time on almost any day a few of the men may be seen with open bottles of beer before their places at the table.

However, after all is said and done, Christmas is the rarest day in the naval calendar, the celebration in American fashion being never neglected on a United States man-of-war in port or at sea. The ship is dressed fore and aft with banners, and in port her decks are piled with green stuff. In any of the ports in low latitudes, like Callao or Montevideo, the mass of palms and ferns distributed on Christmas on the spar deck of a warship gives the vessel a lovely holiday appearance. Bluejackets always hang up their socks on Christmas eve. Each takes a new pair out of his ditty bag and strings it to the foot last of his hammock. Examined in the morning, they are commonly found filled with fine, dusty coal, lumps of salt-water soap or pieces of broken candle, but their owners hang them up from year to year, willing to sacrifice a pair of socks to the perpetuation of the custom. On Christmas day there are all manner of games on the spar deck. They are for the most part humorous games and are devised chiefly for the amusement of the men who through misconduct are not permitted to spend the day ashore. In the evening there is always some good music in the forecastle or on the berth deck. On some ships the bluejackets essay the most ambitious airs, and if the bandmaster takes care to put the singers of the crew on the right path one of their Christmas night concerts is worth going a long way to hear.

* * *