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Redburn. His First Voyage

H >> Herman Melville >> Redburn. His First Voyage




"Now Jack," said he, when supper was over, "now Jack, my boy, do you
smoke?--Well then, load away." And he handed me a seal-skin pouch of
tobacco and a pipe. We sat smoking together in this little sea-cabinet
of his, till it began to look much like a state-room in Tophet; and
notwithstanding my host's rubicund nose, I could hardly see him for the
fog.

"He, he, my boy," then said he--"I don't never have any bugs here, I tell
ye: I smokes 'em all out every night before going to bed."

"And where may you sleep?" said I, looking round, and seeing no sign of
a bed.

"Sleep?" says he, "why I sleep in my jacket, that's the best
counterpane; and I use my head for a pillow. He-he, funny, ain't it?"

"Very funny," says I.

"Have some more ale?" says he; "plenty more." "No more, thank you," says
I; "I guess I'll go;" for what with the tobacco-smoke and the ale, I
began to feel like breathing fresh air. Besides, my conscience smote me
for thus freely indulging in the pleasures of the table.

"Now, don't go," said he; "don't go, my boy; don't go out into the damp;
take an old Christian's advice," laying his hand on my shoulder; "it
won't do. You see, by going out now, you'll shake off the ale, and get
broad awake again; but if you stay here, you'll soon be dropping off for
a nice little nap."

But notwithstanding these inducements, I shook my host's hand and
departed. There was hardly any thing I witnessed in the docks that
interested me more than the German emigrants who come on board the large
New York ships several days before their sailing, to make every thing
comfortable ere starting. Old men, tottering with age, and little
infants in arms; laughing girls in bright-buttoned bodices, and astute,
middle-aged men with pictured pipes in their mouths, would be seen
mingling together in crowds of five, six, and seven or eight hundred in
one ship.

Every evening these countrymen of Luther and Melancthon gathered on the
forecastle to sing and pray. And it was exalting to listen to their fine
ringing anthems, reverberating among the crowded shipping, and
rebounding from the lofty walls of the docks. Shut your eyes, and you
would think you were in a cathedral.

They keep up this custom at sea; and every night, in the dog-watch, sing
the songs of Zion to the roll of the great ocean-organ: a pious custom
of a devout race, who thus send over their hallelujahs before them, as
they hie to the land of the stranger.

And among these sober Germans, my country counts the most orderly and
valuable of her foreign population. It is they who have swelled the
census of her Northwestern States; and transferring their ploughs from
the hills of Transylvania to the prairies of Wisconsin; and sowing the
wheat of the Rhine on the banks of the Ohio, raise the grain, that, a
hundred fold increased, may return to their kinsmen in Europe.

There is something in the contemplation of the mode in which America has
been settled, that, in a noble breast, should forever extinguish the
prejudices of national dislikes. Settled by the people of all nations,
all nations may claim her for their own. You can not spill a drop of
American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world. Be he
Englishman, Frenchman, German, Dane, or Scot; the European who scoffs at
an American, calls his own brother Raca, and stands in danger of the
judgment. We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a bigoted Hebrew
nationality--whose blood has been debased in the attempt to ennoble it,
by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves. No: our blood is
as the flood of the Amazon, made up of a thousand noble currents all
pouring into one. We are not a nation, so much as a world; for unless we
may claim all the world for our sire, like Melchisedec, we are without
father or mother.

For who was our father and our mother? Or can we point to any Romulus
and Remus for our founders? Our ancestry is lost in the universal
paternity; and Caesar and Alfred, St. Paul and Luther, and Homer and
Shakespeare are as much ours as Washington, who is as much the world's
as our own. We are the heirs of all time, and with all nations we divide
our inheritance. On this Western Hemisphere all tribes and people are
forming into one federated whole; and there is a future which shall see
the estranged children of Adam restored as to the old hearthstone in
Eden.

The other world beyond this, which was longed for by the devout before
Columbus' time, was found in the New; and the deep-sea-lead, that first
struck these soundings, brought up the soil of Earth's Paradise. Not a
Paradise then, or now; but to be made so, at God's good pleasure, and in
the fullness and mellowness of time. The seed is sown, and the harvest
must come; and our children's children, on the world's jubilee morning,
shall all go with their sickles to the reaping. Then shall the curse of
Babel be revoked, a new Pentecost come, and the language they shall
speak shall be the language of Britain. Frenchmen, and Danes, and Scots;
and the dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean, and in the regions
round about; Italians, and Indians, and Moors; there shall appear unto
them cloven tongues as of fire.




XXXIV. THE IRRAWADDY


Among the various ships lying in Prince's Dock, none interested me more
than the Irrawaddy, of Bombay, a "country ship," which is the name
bestowed by Europeans upon the large native vessels of India. Forty
years ago, these merchantmen were nearly the largest in the world; and
they still exceed the generality. They are built of the celebrated teak
wood, the oak of the East, or in Eastern phrase, "the King of the Oaks."
The Irrawaddy had just arrived from Hindostan, with a cargo of cotton.
She was manned by forty or fifty Lascars, the native seamen of India,
who seemed to be immediately governed by a countryman of theirs of a
higher caste. While his inferiors went about in strips of white linen,
this dignitary was arrayed in a red army-coat, brilliant with gold lace,
a cocked hat, and drawn sword. But the general effect was quite spoiled
by his bare feet.

In discharging the cargo, his business seemed to consist in flagellating
the crew with the flat of his saber, an exercise in which long practice
had made him exceedingly expert. The poor fellows jumped away with the
tackle-rope, elastic as cats.

One Sunday, I went aboard of the Irrawaddy, when this oriental usher
accosted me at the gangway, with his sword at my throat. I gently pushed
it aside, making a sign expressive of the pacific character of my
motives in paying a visit to the ship. Whereupon he very considerately
let me pass.

I thought I was in Pegu, so strangely woody was the smell of the
dark-colored timbers, whose odor was heightened by the rigging of kayar,
or cocoa-nut fiber.

The Lascars were on the forecastle-deck. Among them were Malays,
Mahrattas, Burmese, Siamese, and Cingalese. They were seated round
"kids" full of rice, from which, according to their invariable custom,
they helped themselves with one hand, the other being reserved for quite
another purpose. They were chattering like magpies in Hindostanee, but I
found that several of them could also speak very good English. They were
a small-limbed, wiry, tawny set; and I was informed made excellent
seamen, though ill adapted to stand the hardships of northern voyaging.

They told me that seven of their number had died on the passage from
Bombay; two or three after crossing the Tropic of Cancer, and the rest
met their fate in the Channel, where the ship had been tost about in
violent seas, attended with cold rains, peculiar to that vicinity. Two
more had been lost overboard from the flying-jib-boom.

I was condoling with a young English cabin-boy on board, upon the loss
of these poor fellows, when he said it was their own fault; they would
never wear monkey-jackets, but clung to their thin India robes, even in
the bitterest weather. He talked about them much as a farmer would about
the loss of so many sheep by the murrain.

The captain of the vessel was an Englishman, as were also the three
mates, master and boatswain. These officers lived astern in the cabin,
where every Sunday they read the Church of England's prayers, while the
heathen at the other end of the ship were left to their false gods and
idols. And thus, with Christianity on the quarter-deck, and paganism on
the forecastle, the Irrawaddy ploughed the sea.

As if to symbolize this state of things, the "fancy piece" astern
comprised, among numerous other carved decorations, a cross and a miter;
while forward, on the bows, was a sort of devil for a figure-head--a
dragon-shaped creature, with a fiery red mouth, and a switchy-looking
tail.

After her cargo was discharged, which was done "to the sound of flutes
and soft recorders"--something as work is done in the navy to the music
of the boatswain's pipe--the Lascars were set to "stripping the ship"
that is, to sending down all her spars and ropes.

At this time, she lay alongside of us, and the Babel on board almost
drowned our own voices. In nothing but their girdles, the Lascars hopped
about aloft, chattering like so many monkeys; but, nevertheless, showing
much dexterity and seamanship in their manner of doing their work.

Every Sunday, crowds of well-dressed people came down to the dock to see
this singular ship; many of them perched themselves in the shrouds of
the neighboring craft, much to the wrath of Captain Riga, who left
strict orders with our old ship-keeper, to drive all strangers out of
the Highlander's rigging. It was amusing at these times, to watch the
old women with umbrellas, who stood on the quay staring at the Lascars,
even when they desired to be private. These inquisitive old ladies
seemed to regard the strange sailors as a species of wild animal, whom
they might gaze at with as much impunity, as at leopards in the
Zoological Gardens.

One night I was returning to the ship, when just as I was passing
through the Dock Gate, I noticed a white figure squatting against the
wall outside. It proved to be one of the Lascars who was smoking, as the
regulations of the docks prohibit his indulging this luxury on board his
vessel. Struck with the curious fashion of his pipe, and the odor from
it, I inquired what he was smoking; he replied "Joggerry," which is a
species of weed, used in place of tobacco.

Finding that he spoke good English, and was quite communicative, like
most smokers, I sat down by Dattabdool-mans, as he called himself, and
we fell into conversation. So instructive was his discourse, that when
we parted, I had considerably added to my stock of knowledge. Indeed, it
is a Godsend to fall in with a fellow like this. He knows things you
never dreamed of; his experiences are like a man from the moon--wholly
strange, a new revelation. If you want to learn romance, or gain an
insight into things quaint, curious, .and marvelous, drop your books of
travel, and take a stroll along the docks of a great commercial port.
Ten to one, you will encounter Crusoe himself among the crowds of
mariners from all parts of the globe.

But this is no place for making mention of all the subjects upon which I
and my Lascar friend mostly discoursed; I will only try to give his
account of the teakwood and kayar rope, concerning which things I was
curious, and sought information.

The "sagoon" as he called the tree which produces the teak, grows in its
greatest excellence among the mountains of Malabar, whence large
quantities are sent to Bombay for shipbuilding. He also spoke of another
kind of wood, the "sissor," which supplies most of the "shin-logs," or
"knees," and crooked timbers in the country ships. The sagoon grows to
an immense size; sometimes there is fifty feet of trunk, three feet
through, before a single bough is put forth. Its leaves are very large;
and to convey some idea of them, my Lascar likened them to elephants'
ears. He said a purple dye was extracted from them, for the purpose of
staining cottons and silks. The wood is specifically heavier than water;
it is easily worked, and extremely strong and durable. But its chief
merit lies in resisting the action of the salt water, and the attacks of
insects; which resistance is caused by its containing a resinous oil
called "poonja."

To my surprise, he informed me that the Irrawaddy was wholly built by
the native shipwrights of India, who, he modestly asserted, surpassed
the European artisans.

The rigging, also, was of native manufacture. As the kayar, of which it
is composed, is now getting into use both in England and America, as
well for ropes and rigging as for mats and rugs, my Lascar friend's
account of it, joined to my own observations, may not be uninteresting.

In India, it is prepared very much in the same way as in Polynesia. The
cocoa-nut is gathered while the husk is still green, and but partially
ripe; and this husk is removed by striking the nut forcibly, with both
hands, upon a sharp-pointed stake, planted uprightly in the ground. In
this way a boy will strip nearly fifteen hundred in a day. But the kayar
is not made from the husk, as might be supposed, but from the rind of
the nut; which, after being long soaked in water, is beaten with
mallets, and rubbed together into fibers. After this being dried in the
sun, you may spin it, just like hemp, or any similar substance. The
fiber thus produced makes very strong and durable ropes, extremely well
adapted, from their lightness and durability, for the running rigging of
a ship; while the same causes, united with its great strength and
buoyancy, render it very suitable for large cables and hawsers.

But the elasticity of the kayar ill fits it for the shrouds and
standing-rigging of a ship, which require to be comparatively firm.
Hence, as the Irrawaddy's shrouds were all of this substance, the Lascar
told me, they were continually setting up or slacking off her
standing-rigging, according as the weather was cold or warm. And the
loss of a foretopmast, between the tropics, in a squall, he attributed
to this circumstance.

After a stay of about two weeks, the Irrawaddy had her heavy Indian
spars replaced with Canadian pine, and her kayar shrouds with hempen
ones. She then mustered her pagans, and hoisted sail for London.




XXXV. GALLIOTS, COAST-OF-GUINEA-MAN, AND FLOATING CHAPEL


Another very curious craft often seen in the Liverpool docks, is the
Dutch galliot, an old-fashioned looking gentleman, with hollow waist,
high prow and stern, and which, seen lying among crowds of tight Yankee
traders, and pert French brigantines, always reminded me of a cocked hat
among modish beavers.

The construction of the galliot has not altered for centuries; and the
northern European nations, Danes and Dutch, still sail the salt seas in
this flat-bottomed salt-cellar of a ship; although, in addition to
these, they have vessels of a more modern kind.

They seldom paint the galliot; but scrape and varnish all its planks and
spars, so that all over it resembles the "bright side" or polished
streak, usually banding round an American ship.

Some of them are kept scrupulously neat and clean, and remind one of a
well-scrubbed wooden platter, or an old oak table, upon which much wax
and elbow vigor has been expended. Before the wind, they sail well; but
on a bowline, owing to their broad hulls and flat bottoms, they make
leeway at a sad rate.

Every day, some strange vessel entered Prince's Dock; and hardly would I
gaze my fill at some outlandish craft from Surat or the Levant, ere a
still more outlandish one would absorb my attention.

Among others, I remember, was a little brig from the Coast of Guinea. In
appearance, she was the ideal of a slaver; low, black, clipper-built
about the bows, and her decks in a state of most piratical disorder.

She carried a long, rusty gun, on a swivel, amid-ships; and that gun
was a curiosity in itself. It must have been some old veteran, condemned
by the government, and sold for any thing it would fetch. It was an
antique, covered with half-effaced inscriptions, crowns, anchors,
eagles; and it had two handles near the trunnions, like those of a
tureen. The knob on the breach was fashioned into a dolphin's head; and
by a comical conceit, the touch-hole formed the orifice of a human ear;
and a stout tympanum it must have had, to have withstood the concussions
it had heard.

The brig, heavily loaded, lay between two large ships in ballast; so
that its deck was at least twenty feet below those of its neighbors.
Thus shut in, its hatchways looked like the entrance to deep vaults or
mines; especially as her men were wheeling out of her hold some kind of
ore, which might have been gold ore, so scrupulous were they in evening
the bushel measures, in which they transferred it to the quay; and so
particular was the captain, a dark-skinned whiskerando, in a Maltese cap
and tassel, in standing over the sailors, with his pencil and
memorandum-book in hand.

The crew were a buccaneering looking set; with hairy chests, purple
shirts, and arms wildly tattooed. The mate had a wooden leg, and hobbled
about with a crooked cane like a spiral staircase. There was a deal of
swearing on board of this craft, which was rendered the more
reprehensible when she came to moor alongside the Floating Chapel.

This was the hull of an old sloop-of-war, which had been converted into
a mariner's church. A house had been built upon it, and a steeple took
the place of a mast. There was a little balcony near the base of the
steeple, some twenty feet from the water; where, on week-days, I used to
see an old pensioner of a tar, sitting on a camp-stool, reading his
Bible. On Sundays he hoisted the Bethel flag, and like the muezzin or
cryer of prayers on the top of a Turkish mosque, would call the
strolling sailors to their devotions; not officially, but on his own
account; conjuring them not to make fools of themselves, but muster
round the pulpit, as they did about the capstan on a man-of-war. This
old worthy was the sexton. I attended the chapel several times, and
found there a very orderly but small congregation. The first time I
went, the chaplain was discoursing on future punishments, and making
allusions to the Tartarean Lake; which, coupled with the pitchy smell of
the old hull, summoned up the most forcible image of the thing which I
ever experienced.

The floating chapels which are to be found in some of the docks, form
one of the means which have been tried to induce the seamen visiting
Liverpool to turn their thoughts toward serious things. But as very few
of them ever think of entering these chapels, though they might pass
them twenty times in the day, some of the clergy, of a Sunday, address
them in the open air, from the corners of the quays, or wherever they
can procure an audience.

Whenever, in my Sunday strolls, I caught sight of one of these
congregations, I always made a point of joining it; and would find
myself surrounded by a motley crowd of seamen from all quarters of the
globe, and women, and lumpers, and dock laborers of all sorts.
Frequently the clergyman would be standing upon an old cask, arrayed in
full canonicals, as a divine of the Church of England. Never have I
heard religious discourses better adapted to an audience of men, who,
like sailors, are chiefly, if not only, to be moved by the plainest of
precepts, and demonstrations of the misery of sin, as conclusive and
undeniable as those of Euclid. No mere rhetoric avails with such men;
fine periods are vanity. You can not touch them with tropes. They need
to be pressed home by plain facts.

And such was generally the mode in which they were addressed by the
clergy in question: who, taking familiar themes for their discourses,
which were leveled right at the wants of their auditors, always
succeeded in fastening their attention. In particular, the two great
vices to which sailors are most addicted, and which they practice to the
ruin of both body and soul; these things, were the most enlarged upon.
And several times on the docks, I have seen a robed clergyman addressing
a large audience of women collected from the notorious lanes and alleys
in the neighborhood.

Is not this as it ought to be? since the true calling of the reverend
clergy is like their divine Master's;--not to bring the righteous, but
sinners to repentance. Did some of them leave the converted and
comfortable congregations, before whom they have ministered year after
year; and plunge at once, like St. Paul, into the infected centers and
hearts of vice: then indeed, would they find a strong enemy to cope
with; and a victory gained over him, would entitle them to a conqueror's
wreath. Better to save one sinner from an obvious vice that is
destroying him, than to indoctrinate ten thousand saints. And as from
every corner, in Catholic towns, the shrines of Holy Mary and the Child
Jesus perpetually remind the commonest wayfarer of his heaven; even so
should Protestant pulpits be founded in the market-places, and at street
corners, where the men of God might be heard by all of His children.




XXXVI. THE OLD CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS, AND THE DEAD-HOUSE


The floating chapel recalls to mind the "Old Church," well known to the
seamen of many generations, who have visited Liverpool. It stands very
near the docks, a venerable mass of brown stone, and by the town's
people is called the Church of St. Nicholas. I believe it is the best
preserved piece of antiquity in all Liverpool.

Before the town rose to any importance, it was the only place of worship
on that side of the Mersey; and under the adjoining Parish of Walton was
a chapel-of-ease; though from the straight backed pews, there could have
been but little comfort taken in it.

In old times, there stood in front of the church a statue of St.
Nicholas, the patron of mariners; to which all pious sailors made
offerings, to induce his saintship to grant them short and prosperous
voyages. In the tower is a fine chime of bells; and I well remember my
delight at first hearing them on the first Sunday morning after our
arrival in the dock. It seemed to carry an admonition with it; something
like the premonition conveyed to young Whittington by Bow Bells.
"Wettingborough! Wettingborough! you must not forget to go to church,
Wettingborough! Don't forget, Wettingborough! Wettingborough! don't
forget."

Thirty or forty years ago, these bells were rung upon the arrival of
every Liverpool ship from a foreign voyage. How forcibly does this
illustrate the increase of the commerce of the town! Were the same
custom now observed, the bells would seldom have a chance to cease.

What seemed the most remarkable about this venerable old church, and
what seemed the most barbarous, and grated upon the veneration with
which I regarded this time-hallowed structure, was the condition of the
grave-yard surrounding it. From its close vicinity to the haunts of the
swarms of laborers about the docks, it is crossed and re-crossed by
thoroughfares in all directions; and the tomb-stones, not being erect,
but horizontal (indeed, they form a complete flagging to the spot),
multitudes are constantly walking over the dead; their heels erasing the
death's-heads and crossbones, the last mementos of the departed. At
noon, when the lumpers employed in loading and unloading the shipping,
retire for an hour to snatch a dinner, many of them resort to the
grave-yard; and seating themselves upon a tomb-stone use the adjoining
one for a table. Often, I saw men stretched out in a drunken sleep upon
these slabs; and once, removing a fellow's arm, read the following
inscription, which, in a manner, was true to the life, if not to the
death:--

"HERE LYETH YE BODY OF TOBIAS DRINKER."

For two memorable circumstances connected with this church, I am
indebted to my excellent friend, Morocco, who tells me that in 1588 the
Earl of Derby, coming to his residence, and waiting for a passage to the
Isle of Man, the corporation erected and adorned a sumptuous stall in
the church for his reception. And moreover, that in the time of
Cromwell's wars, when the place was taken by that mad nephew of King
Charles, Prince Rupert, he converted the old church into a military
prison and stable; when, no doubt, another "sumptuous stall" was erected
for the benefit of the steed of some noble cavalry officer.

In the basement of the church is a Dead House, like the Morgue in Paris,
where the bodies of the drowned are exposed until claimed by their
friends, or till buried at the public charge.

From the multitudes employed about the shipping, this dead-house has
always more or less occupants. Whenever I passed up Chapel-street, I
used to see a crowd gazing through the grim iron grating of the door,
upon the faces of the drowned within. And once, when the door was
opened, I saw a sailor stretched out, stark and stiff, with the sleeve
of his frock rolled up, and showing his name and date of birth tattooed
upon his arm. It was a sight full of suggestions; he seemed his own
headstone.

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