38Talk:
A Forum for Discussions among Voyagers and Others related to the 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan
Description of a 'spouter' from "Two Years Before the Mast"
From: UNK
Date: 2014 Aug 5, 16:42 -0400
From: UNK
Date: 2014 Aug 5, 16:42 -0400
I thought you might enjoy the disdainful description of a 'spouter' by Charles W. Dana, in Two Years Before the Mast" - not much similarity to the Charles W. Morgan on our voyage, at least!
-Dick French
Tuesday, Nov. 10th. Going ashore, as usual, in the gig, just before
sundown, to bring off the captain, we found, upon taking in the captain
and pulling off again, that our ship, which lay the farthest out, had
run up her ensign. This meant "Sail ho!" of course, but as we were
within the point we could see nothing. "Give way, boys! Give way! Lay
out on your oars, and long stroke!" said the captain; and stretching to
the whole length of our arms, bending back again, so that our backs
touched the thwarts, we sent her through the water like a rocket. A
few minutes of such pulling opened the islands, one after another, in
range of the point, and gave us a view of the Canal, where was a ship,
under top-gallant sails, standing in, with a light breeze, for the
anchorage. Putting the boat's head in the direction of the ship, the
captain told us to lay out again; and we needed no spurring, for the
prospect of boarding a new ship, perhaps from home, hearing the news
and having something to tell of when we got back, was excitement enough
for us, and we gave way with a will. Captain Nye, of the Loriotte, who
had been an old whaleman, was in the stern-sheets, and fell mightily
into the spirit of it. "Bend your backs and break your oars!" said he.
"Lay me on, Captain Bunker!" "There she flukes!" and other
exclamations, peculiar to whalemen. In the meantime, it fell flat
calm, and being within a couple of miles of the ship, we expected to
board her in a few moments, when a sudden breeze sprung up, dead ahead
for the ship, and she braced up and stood off toward the islands, sharp
on the larboard tack, making good way through the water. This, of
course, brought us up, and we had only to "ease larboard oars; pull
round starboard!" and go aboard the Alert, with something very like a
flea in the ear. There was a light land-breeze all night, and the ship
did not come to anchor until the next morning. As soon as her anchor
was down, we went aboard, and found her to be the whaleship, Wilmington
and Liverpool Packet, of New Bedford, last from the "off-shore ground,"
with nineteen hundred barrels of oil. A "spouter" we knew her to be as
soon as we saw her, by her cranes and boats, and by her stump
top-gallant masts, and a certain slovenly look to the sails, rigging,
spars and hull; and when we got on board, we found everything to
correspond,--spouter fashion. She had a false deck, which was rough
and oily, and cut up in every direction by the chimes of oil casks; her
rigging was slack and turning white; no paint on the spars or blocks;
clumsy seizings and straps without covers, and homeward-bound splices
in every direction. Her crew, too, were not in much better order. Her
captain was a slab-sided, shamble-legged Quaker, in a suit of brown,
with a broad-brimmed hat, and sneaking about decks, like a sheep, with
his head down; and the men looked more like fishermen and farmers than
they did like sailors.
Though it was by no means cold weather, (we having on only our red
shirts and duck trowsers,) they all had on woollen trowsers--not blue
and shipshape--but of all colors--brown, drab, grey, aye, and green,
with suspenders over their shoulders, and pockets to put their hands
in. This, added to guernsey frocks, striped comforters about the neck,
thick cowhide boots, woollen caps, and a strong, oily smell, and a
decidedly green look, will complete the description. Eight or ten were
on the fore-topsail yard, and as many more in the main, furling the
topsails, while eight or ten were hanging about the forecastle, doing
nothing. This was a strange sight for a vessel coming to anchor; so we
went up to them, to see what was the matter. One of them, a stout,
hearty-looking fellow, held out his leg and said he had the scurvy;
another had cut his hand; and others had got nearly well, but said that
there were plenty aloft to furl the sails, so they were sogering on the
forecastle. There was only one "splicer" on board, a fine-looking old
tar, who was in the bunt of the fore-topsail. He was probably the only
sailor in the ship, before the mast. The mates, of course, and the
boat-steerers, and also two or three of the crew, had been to sea
before, but only whaling voyages; and the greater part of the crew were
raw hands, just from the bush, as green as cabbages, and had not yet
got the hay-seed out of their heads. The mizen topsail hung in the
bunt-lines until everything was furled forward. Thus a crew of thirty
men were half an hour in doing what would have been done in the Alert
with eighteen hands to go aloft, in fifteen or twenty minutes.
We found they had been at sea six or eight months, and had no news to
tell us; so we left them, and promised to get liberty to come on board
in the evening, for some curiosities, etc. Accordingly, as soon as we
were knocked off in the evening and had got supper, we obtained leave,
took a boat, and went aboard and spent an hour or two. They gave us
pieces of whalebone, and the teeth and other parts of curious sea
animals, and we exchanged books with them--a practice very common among
ships in foreign ports, by which you get rid of the books you have read
and re-read, and a supply of new ones in their stead, and Jack is not
very nice as to their comparative value.
