From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life

Whether the Congress's helm on this interesting occasion was shifted for sternboard I never inquired. Marryat tells us it was a moot point in his young days. Our captain was an excellent seaman, but had 'doxies of his own. Of these, one which ran contrary to current standards was in favor of clewing up a course or topsail to leeward, in blowing weather. Among the lieutenants was a strong champion of the opposite and accepted dogma, and a messmate of mine, in his division and shining by reflected light, was always prompt to enforce closure of debate by declaiming:

"He who seeks the tempest to disarmWill never first embrail the lee yard-arm."

Whether Falconer, besides being a poet, was also an expert in seamanship, or whether he simply registered the views of his day, may be questioned. The two alternatives, I fancy, were the chance of splitting the sail, and that of springing the yard; and any one who has ever watched a big bag of wind whipping a weather yard-arm up and down in its bellying struggles, after clewing up to windward, will have experienced as eager a desire to call it down as he has ever felt to suppress its congener in an after-dinner oration. Both are much out of place and time.

Days of the past! Certainly a watch spent reefing topsails in the rain was less tedious than that everlasting bridge of to-day: Tramp! Tramp! or stand still, facing the wind blowing the teeth down your throat. Nothing to do requiring effort; the engine does all that; but still a perpetual strain of attention due to the rapid motion of vessels under steam. The very slowness of sailing-ships lightened anxiety. In such a gale you might as well be anxious in a wheel-chair. And then, when you went below, you went, not bored, but healthfully tired with active exertion of mind and body. Yes; the sound was sweet then, at eight bells, the pipe, pipe, pipe, pipe of the boatswain's mates, followed by their gruff voices drawling out, in loud sing-song: "A-a-a-all the starboard watch! Come! turn out there! Tumble out! Tumble out! Show a leg! Show a leg! On deck there! all the starboard watch!" When I went below that morning with the port watch, at four o'clock, I turned over to my relief a forecastle on which he would have nothing to do but drink his coffee at daylight.

That daylight coffee of the morning watch, chief of its charms, need not be described to the many who have experienced the difference between the old man and the new man of before and after coffee. The galley (kitchen) fire of ships of war used to be started at seven bells of the mid-watch (3.30 a.m.); and the officers, and most of the men, who next came on duty, managed to have coffee, the latter husbanding their rations to this end. Since those days a benevolent regulation has allowed an extra ration of coffee to the crew for this purpose, so that no man goes without, or works the morning watch on an empty stomach. For the morning watch was very busy. Then, on several days of the week, the seamen washed their clothes. Then the upper deck was daily scrubbed; sometimes the mere washing off the soap-suds left from the clothes, sometimes with brooms and sand, sometimes the solemn ceremony of holy-stoning with its monotonous musical sound of grinding. Along with these, dovetailed in as opportunity offered, in a sailing-ship under way there went on the work of readjusting the yards and sails; a pull here and a pull there, like a woman getting herself into shape after sitting too long in one position. Yards trimmed to a nicety; the two sheets of each sail close home alike; all the canvas taut up, from the weather-tacks of the courses to the weather-earings of the royals; no slack weather-braces, or weather-leaches, letting a bight of loose canvas sag like an incipient double chin. When these and a dozen other little details had remedied the disorders of the night, due to the invariable slacking of cordage under strain, the ship was fit for any eye to light on, like a conscious beauty going forth conquering and to conquer. I doubt the crew grumbled and d–d a little under their breath, for the process was tedious; yet it was not only a fad, but necessary, and the deck-officer who habitually neglected it might possibly rise to an emergency, but was scarcely otherwise worth his salt. In my humble judgment, he had better have worn a frock-coat unbuttoned.

Occupation in plenty was not the only solace of a morning watch; at least in the trades. While the men were washing their clothes, the midshipman of the watch, amid the exhilaration of his coffee, and with the cool sea-water careering over his bare feet, had ample leisure to watch the break of day: the gradual lighting up of the zenith, the rosy tints gathering and growing upon the tiny, pearly trade-clouds of which I have spoken, the blue of the water gradually revealing itself, laughing with white-caps, like the Psalmist's valleys of corn; until at last the sun appeared, never direct from the sea, but from these white cloud banks which extend less than five degrees above it. Such a scene presents itself day after day, day after day, monotonous but never wearisome, to a vessel running down the trades; that is, steering from east to west, with fixed, fair breeze, as I have more than once had the happiness to do. Then, as the saying was, a fortnight passed without touching brace or tack, because no change of wind; a slight exaggeration, for frequent squalls required the canvas to be handled, but substantially true in impression. Balmy weather and a steady gait, rarely more than seven or eight knots—less than two hundred miles a day; but who would be in haste to quit such conditions, where the sun rose astern daily with the joy of a giant running his course, bringing assurance of prosperity, and sank to rest ahead smiling, again behind the dimpling clouds which he tinged like mother-of-pearl.

Such was not our lot in the Congress, for we were bound south, across the trades. This, with some bad luck, brought us close-hauled, that we might pass the equator nothing to the westward of thirty degrees of west longitude; otherwise we might fall to leeward of Cape St. Roque. This ominous phrase meant that we might be so far to the westward that the southeast trades, when reached, would not let the ship pass clear of this easternmost point of Brazil on one stretch; that we would strike the coast north of it and have to beat round, which actually happened. Consequently we never had a fair wind, to set a studding-sail, till we were within three or four days of Bahia. This encouraging incident, the first of the kind since the ship went into commission, also befell in one of my mid-watches, and an awful mess our unuse made of it. All the gear seemed to be bent with a half-dozen round turns; the stun'sail-yards went aloft wrong end uppermost, dangling in the most extraordinary and wholly unmanageable attitudes; everything had to be done over and over again, till at last the case looked desperate. Finally the lieutenant of the watch came forward in wrath. He was a Kentuckian, very competent, ordinarily very good-tempered; but there was red in his hair. When he got sufficiently near he tucked the speaking-trumpet under his arm, where it looked uncommonly like a fat cotton umbrella, himself suggesting a farmer inspecting an intended purchase, and in this posture delivered to us a stump speech on our shortcomings. This, I fear, I will have to leave to the reader's imagination. It would require innumerable dashes, and even so the emphasis would be lost. My relief had cause to be pleased that those stun'sails were set by four o'clock, when he came on deck. Ours the labor, his the reward.

A few days more saw us in Bahia; and with our arrival on the station began a round of duties and enjoyments which made life at twenty pleasant enough, both in the passage and in retrospect, but which scarcely afford material for narration. Our two chief ports, Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo, were then remote and provincial. They have become more accessible and modern; but at the time of my last visit—already over thirty years ago—they had lost in local color and particular attraction as much as they had gained in convenience and development. Street-cars, double-ended American ferry-boats, electric lights, and all the other things for which these stand, are doubtless good; but they make places seem less strange and so less interesting. But I suppose there must still be in the business streets that pervading odor of rum and sugar which tells that you are in the tropics; still there must be the delicious hot calm of the early morning, before the sea-breeze sets in, the fruit-laden boats plying over the still waters to the ships of war; still that brilliant access of life and animation which comes sparkling in with the sea-breeze, and which can be seen in the offing, approaching, long before it enters the bay. The balance of better and worse will be variously estimated by various minds. The magnificent scenery of Rio remains, and must remain, short of earthquake; the Sugar Loaf, the distant Organ mountains, the near, high, surrounding hills, the numerous bights and diversified bluffs, which impart continuous novelty to the prospect. It is surprising that in these days of travel more do not go just to see that sight, even if they never put foot on shore; though I would not commend the omission. I see, too, in the current newspapers, that Secretary Root has attributed to the women of Uruguay to-day the charm which we youngsters then found in those who are now their grand-mothers. As Mr. Secretary cannot be very far from my own age, we have here the mature confirmation of an impression which otherwise might be attributed to the facility of youth.

An interesting, though not very important, reminiscence of things now passed away was the coming and going of numerous vessels, usually small, carrying the commercial flags of the Hanse cities, Bremen, Hamburg, and Lubeck, now superseded on the ocean by that of the German Empire. Scarcely a morning watch which did not see in its earlier hours one or more of these stealing out of port with the tail of the land breeze. These remnants of the "Easterlings," a term which now survives only in "sterling," were mostly small brigs of some two hundred tons, noticeable mainly for their want of sheer; that is, their rails, and presumably their decks, were level, without rise at the extremities such as most vessels show.

Up to the middle of the last century, Rio, thanks probably to its remoteness, had escaped the yellow-fever. But the soil and climate were propitious; and about 1850 it made good a footing which it never relinquished. At the time of our cruise it was endemic, and we consequently spent there but two or three months of the cooler season, June to September. Even so, visiting the city was permitted to only a few selected men of the foremast hands. The habits of the seamen were still those of a generation before, and drink, with its consequent reckless exposure, was a right-hand man to Yellow Jack. All shore indulgence was confined to Montevideo, where we spent near half of the year; and being limited to one or two occasions only, of two or three days duration each, it was signalized by those excesses which, in conjunction with the absence of half the crew at once, put an end to all ordinary routine and drill on board. My friend, the captain of the forecastle, who apprehended that the Southern leaders would lose their property, a self-respecting, admirably behaved man in ordinary times, was usually hoisted on board by a tackle when he returned: for Montevideo affords only an open roadstead for big ships, and frequently a rough sea. The story ran that he secured a room on going ashore, provided for the safety of his money, bought a box of gin, and went to bed. This I never verified; but I remember a nautical philosopher among the crew enlarging, in my hearing, on the folly of drink. To its morality he was indifferent; but from sad experience he avouched that it incapacitated you for other enjoyments, regular and irregular, and that he for one should quit. To-day things are changed—revolutionized. There may be ports too sickly to risk lives in; but the men to be selected now are the few who cannot be trusted, the percentage which every society contains. This result will be variously interpreted. Some will attribute it to the abolition of the grog ration, the removal of temptation, a change of environment. Others will say that the extension of frequent leave, and consequent opportunity, has abolished the frenzied inclination to make the most—not the best—of a rare chance; has renewed men from within. Personally, I believe the last. Together with the gradual rise of tone throughout society, rational liberty among seamen has resulted in rational indulgence. "Better England free than England sober."

In the end it was from Montevideo that we sailed for home in June, 1861. During the preceding six months, mail after mail brought us increasing ill tidings of the events succeeding the election of Lincoln. Somewhere within that period a large American steamboat, of the type then used on Long Island Sound, arrived in the La Plata for passenger and freight service between Montevideo and Buenos Ayres. Her size and comfort, her extensive decoration and expanses of gold and white, unknown hitherto, created some sensation, and gave abundant supply to local paragraphists. Her captain was a Southerner, and his wife also; of male and female types. He commented to me briefly, but sadly, "Yes, we have now two governments"; but she was all aglow. Never would she lay down arms; M. Ollivier's light heart was "not in it" with hers; her countenance shone with joy, except when clouded with contempt for the craven action of the Star of the West, a merchant-steamer with supplies for Fort Sumter which had turned back before the fire of the Charleston batteries. Never could she have done such a thing. What influence women wield, and how irresponsible! And they want votes!

In feeling, most of us stood where this captain did, sorrowful, perplexed; but in feeling only, not in purpose. We knew not which became us most, grief, or stern satisfaction that at last a doubtful matter was to be settled by arms; but, with one or two exceptions, there was no hesitancy, I believe, on the part of the officers as to the side each should take. There were four pronounced Southerners: two of them messmates of mine, from New Orleans. The other two were the captain and lieutenant of marines. None of these was extreme, except the captain, whom, though well on in middle life, I have seen stamp up and down raging with excitement. On one occasion, so violent was his language that I said to him he would do well to put ice to his head; an impertinence, considering our relative ages, but almost warranted. I think that he possibly took over the lieutenant, who was from a border State, and, like the midshipmen, rather sobered than enthusiastic at the prospects; though these last had no doubts as to their own course. There was also a sea lieutenant from the South, who said to me that if his State was fool enough to secede, she might go, for him; he would not fight against her, but he would not follow her. I believe he did escape having to fight in her waters, but he was in action on the Union side elsewhere, and, I expect, revised this decision. This halting allegiance, thinking to serve two masters, was not frequent; but there were instances. Of one such I knew. He told me himself that he on a certain occasion had said in company that he would not leave the navy, but would try for employment outside the country; whereon an officer standing by said to him that that appeared a pretty shabby thing, to take pay and dodge duty. The remark sank deep; he changed his mind, and served with great gallantry. It seems to me now almost an impiety to record, but, knowing my father's warm love for the South, I hazarded to the marine captain a doubt as to his position. He replied that there could be no doubt whatever. "All your father's antecedents are military; there is no military spirit in the North; he must come to us." Many Southerners, not by any means most, had formed such impressions.

The remainder of the officers were not so much Northern as Union, a distinction which meant much in the feeling that underlies action. Our second lieutenant, with soberer appreciation of conditions than the marine, said to me, "I cannot understand how those others expect to win in the face of the overpowering resources of the Northern States." The leaders of the Confederacy, too, understood this; and while I am sure that expected dissension in the North, and interference from Europe, counted for much in their complicated calculations, I imagine that the marine's overweighted theory, of incompatibility between the mercantile and military temperaments, also entered largely. My Kentuckian expressed the characteristic, if somewhat crude, opinion, that the two had better fight it out now, till one was well licked; after which his head should be punched and he be told to be decent hereafter. We had, however, one Northern fire-eater among the midshipmen. He was a plucky fellow, but with an odd cast to his eyes and a slight malformation, which made his ecstasies of wrath a little comical. His denunciations of all half measures, or bounded sentiments, quite equalled those of the marine officer on the other side. If the two had been put into the same ring, little could have been left but a few rags of clothes, so completely did they lose their heads; but, as often happens with such champions, their harangues descended mostly on quiet men, conveniently known as doughfaces.

Doughfaces I suppose we must have been, if the term applied fitly to those who, between the alternatives of dissolving the Union and fighting one another, were longing to see some third way open out of the dilemma. In this sense Lincoln, with his life-long record of opposition to the extension of slavery, was a doughface. The marine could afford to harden his face, because he believed there would be no war—the North would not fight; while the midshipman, rather limited intellectually, was happy in a mental constitution which could see but one side of a case; an element of force, but not of conciliation. The more reflective of my two Southern messmates, a man mature beyond his years, said to me sadly, "I suppose there will be bloodshed beyond what the world has known for a long time;" but he naturally shared the prevalent opinion—so often disproved—that a people resolute as he believed his own could not be conquered, especially by a commercial community—the proverbial "nation of shopkeepers." Napoleon once had believed the same, to his ruin. Commercial considerations undoubtedly weigh heavily; but happily sentiment is still stronger than the dollar. An amusing instance of the pocket influence, however, came to my knowledge at the moment. Our captain's son received notice of his appointment as lieutenant of marines, and sailed for home in an American merchant-brig shortly before the news came of the firing on Fort Sumter. When I next met him in the United States, he told me that the brig's captain had been quite warmly Southern in feeling during the passage; but when they reached home, and found that Confederate privateers had destroyed some merchant-vessels, he went entirely over. He had no use for people who would "rob a poor man of his ship and cargo."

Our orders home, and tidings of the attack on Fort Sumter, came by the same mail, some time in June. There were then no cables. The revulsion of feeling was immediate and universal, in that distant community and foreign land, as it had been two months before in the Northern States. The doughfaces were set at once, like a flint. The grave and reverend seigniors, resident merchants, who had checked any belligerent utterance among us with reproachful regret that an American should be willing to fight Americans, were converted or silenced. Every voice but one was hushed, and that voice said, "Fight." I remember a tempestuous gathering, an evening or two before we sailed, and one middle-aged invalid's excited but despondent wish that he was five hundred men. Such ebullitions are common enough in history, for causes bad or good. They are to be taken at their true worth; not as a dependable pledge of endurance to the end, but as an awakening, which differs from that of common times as the blast of the trumpet that summoned men at midnight for Waterloo differs from the lazy rubbing of the eyes before thrusting one's neck into the collar of a working day. The North was roused and united; a result which showed that, wittingly or unwittingly, the Union leaders had so played the cards in their hands as to score the first trick.

Our passage home was tedious but uneventful. I remember only the incident that the flag-officer on one occasion played at old-time warfare of his youth, by showing to a passing vessel a Spanish flag instead of the American. The common ship life went on as though nothing had happened. On an August evening we anchored in Boston lower harbor, and Mr. Robert Forbes, then a very prominent character in Boston, and in most nautical matters throughout the country, came down in a pilot-boat, bringing newspapers to our captain, with whom he was intimate. Then we first learned of Bull Run; and properly mortified we of the North were, not having yet acquired that indifference to a licking which is one of the first steps towards success. Some time after the war was over an army officer of the North repeated to me the comment on this affair made to him by a Southern acquaintance, both being of the aforetime regular army. "I never," he said, "saw men as frightened as ours were—except yours." The after record of both parties takes all the sting out of these words, without lessening the humor.

Immediately upon arrival, the oath of allegiance was tendered, and, of course, refused by our four Southerners. They had doubtless sent in their resignations; but by that time resignations were no longer accepted, and in the following Navy Register they appeared as "dismissed." They were arrested on board the ship and taken as prisoners to Fort Lafayette. I never again saw any of them; but from time to time heard decisively of the deaths of all, save the lieutenant of marines. One of the midshipmen drew from my father an action which I have delighted to recall as characteristic. He wrote from the fort, stating his comradeship with me in the past, and asking if he could be furnished with certain military reading, for his improvement and to pass time. Though suspicions of loyalty were rife, and in those days easily started by the most trivial communication, the books were sent. The war had but just ended, when one morning my father received a letter expressing thanks, and enclosing money to the supposed value of the books. The money was returned; but I, happening to be at home, replied on my own account in such manner as a very young man would. My father saw the addressed envelope, and remonstrated. "Do you think it quite well and prudent to associate yourself, at your age and rank, with one so recently in rebellion? Will it not injure your standing?" I was not convinced; but I yielded to a solicitude which under much more hazardous conditions he had not admitted for himself, though known to be a Virginian. Shortly after his death, while our sorrow was still fresh, I met a contemporary and military intimate of his. "I want," he said, "to tell you an anecdote of your father. We were associated on a board, one of the members of which had proposed, as his own suggestion, a measure which I thought fundamentally and dangerously erroneous. I prepared a paper contesting the project and took it to your father. He read it carefully, and replied, 'I agree with you entirely; but – will never forgive you, and he is persistent and unrelenting towards those who thwart him. You will make a life-long and powerful enemy. If I were you, I should not lay this upon myself.' I gave way to his judgment, and kept back the paper; but you may imagine my surprise when at the next meeting he took upon himself the burden which he had advised me to shun. He made an argument substantially on my lines, and procured the rejection of the proposition. The result was a hostility which ceased only with his life, but between which and me he had interposed."

VII

INCIDENTS OF WAR AND BLOCKADE SERVICE

1861–1862

The Congress, upon her return, was retained in commission, though entirely useless, either for fighting or blockade, under modern conditions. I suppose there were not yet enough of newer vessels to spare her value as a figure-head. She was sent afterwards to Hampton Roads, where in the following March she, with another sailing-frigate, the Cumberland, fell helpless victims to the first Confederate iron-clad. The staff of combatant sea officers was much changed; the captain, the senior three lieutenants, and the midshipmen being detached. Smith, the fourth lieutenant, remained as first; and, in the absence of her captain on other duty, commanded and fell at her death agony. I was sent first to the James Adger, a passenger-steamer then being converted in New York for blockade duty, for which she was very fit; but in ten days more I was moved on to the Pocahontas, a ship built for war, a very respectable little steam-corvette, the only one of her class—if such a bull as a class of one may be excused. She carried one ten-inch gun and four 32-pounders, all smooth-bores. There was, besides, one small nondescript rifled piece, upon which we looked with more curiosity than confidence. Indeed, unless memory deceive, the projectiles from it were quite as apt to go end over end as true. It was rarely used.