American Merchant Ships and Sailors by Willis J. Abbot

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[Illustration: STRIKES A SCHOONER AND SHEARS THROUGH HER LIKE A KNIFE]

Ordinarily there is but short shrift for the helpless folks on a fishing
vessel when struck by a liner. The keen prow cuts right through planking
and stout oak frame, and the dissevered portions of the hull are tossed to
starboard and to port, to sink before the white foam has faded from the
wake of the destroying monster. They tell ghoulish tales of bodies sliced
in twain as neatly as the boat itself; of men asleep in their bunks being
decapitated, or waking, to find themselves struggling in the water with an
arm or leg shorn off. And again, there are stories of escapes that were
almost miraculous; of men thrown by the shock of collision out of the
foretop of the schooner onto the deck of the steamship, and carried abroad
in safety, while their partners mourned them as dead; of men, dozing in
their bunks, startled suddenly by the grinding crash of steel and timbers,
and left gazing wide-eyed at the gray sea lapping the side of their
berths, where an instant before the tough oak skin of the schooner had
been; of men stunned by some flying bit of wood, who, all unconscious,
floated on the top of the hungry waves, until as by Divine direction,
their inert bodies touched the side of a vagrant dory and were dragged
aboard to life again. The Banks can perform their miracles of humanity as
well as of cruelty.

Few forms of manual work are more exacting, involve more physical
suffering and actual peril to life, than fishing with trawls. Under the
happiest circumstances, with the sky clear, the sea moderately calm, and
the air warm, it is arduous, muscle-trying, nerve-racking work. Pulling up
half a mile of line, with hooks catching on the bottom, big fish
floundering and fighting for freedom, and the dory dancing on the waves
like mad, is no easy task. The line cuts the fingers, and the long, hard
pull wearies the wrists until they ache, as though with inflammatory
rheumatism. But when all this had to be done in a wet, chilling fog, or
in a nipping winter's wind that freezes the spray in beard and hair, while
the frost bites the fingers that the line lacerates, then the fisherman's
lot is a bitter one.

The method of setting and hauling the trawls has been well described by
Mr. John Z. Rogers, in "Outing," and some extracts from his story will be
of interest to readers:

"The trawls were of cod-line, and tied to them at distances of
six feet were smaller lines three feet in length, with a hook
attached to the end. Each dory had six trawls, each one eighteen
hundred feet long. The trawls were neatly coiled in tubs made by
sawing flour barrels in two, and as fast as they were baited
with pieces of herring they were carefully coiled into another
tub, that they might run out quickly without snarling when being
set.

"The last trawl was finished just before supper, at five
o'clock. After supper the men enjoyed a Half-hour smoke, then
preparations were made to set the gear, as the trawls are
called. The schooner got well to windward of the place where the
set was to be made, and the first dory was lowered by a block
and tackle. One of the men jumped into it, and his partner
handed him the tubs of gear and then jumped in himself. The dory
was made fast to the schooner by her painter as she drifted
astern, and the other dories were put over in the same manner.
When all the dories were disposed of the first one was cast off.
One of the men rowed the boat before the wind while the other
ran out the gear. First, he threw over a keg for a buoy, which
could be seen from some distance. Fastened to the buoy-line at
some sixty fathoms, or three hundred and sixty feet from the
keg, was the trawl with a small anchor attached to sink it to
the bottom. When this was dropped overboard the trawl was
rapidly run out, and as fast as the end of one was reached it
was tied to the next one, thus making a line of trawl ten
thousand eight hundred feet long, with eighteen hundred hooks
attached. After the schooner had sailed on a straight course a
few hundred yards, the captain cast off the second dory, then
along a little farther the third one, and so on till the five
boats were all setting gear in parallel lines to each other.
When all set this gear practically represented a fishing line
over _ten miles_ long with nine _thousand hooks_ tied to it."

The trawls thus set were left out over night, the schooner picking up the
dories and anchoring near the buoy of the first trawl. At daybreak the
work of hauling in was begun:

"All the dories were made fast astern and left at the head of
their respective trawls as the schooner sailed along. One of the
men in each dory, after pulling up the anchor, put the trawl in
the roller--a grooved wooden wheel eight inches in diameter.
This was fastened to one side of the dory. The trawl was hauled
in hand over hand, the heavy strain necessarily working the dory
slowly along. The fish were taken off as fast as they appeared.
A gaff--a stick about the size and length of a broom handle with
a large, sharp hook attached--lay near at hand, and was
frequently used in landing a fish over the side. Occasionally a
fish would free itself from the trawl hook as it reached the
surface, but the fisherman, with remarkable dexterity, would
grab the gaff, and hook the victim before it could swim out of
reach. What would be on the next hook was always an interesting
uncertainty, for it seemed that all kinds of fish were
represented. Cod and haddock were, of course, numerous, but hake
and pollock struggled on many a hook. Besides these, there was
the brim, a small, red fish, which is excellent fried; the cat
fish, also a good pan fish; the cusk, which is best baked; the
whiting, the eel, the repulsive-looking skate, the monk, of
which it can almost be said that his mouth is bigger than
himself, and last, but not least, that ubiquitous fish, the
curse of amateur harbor fishers, the much-abused sculpin. Nor
were fish alone caught on the hooks, for stones were frequently
pulled up, and one dory brought in a lobster, which had been
hooked by his tail. Some of the captives showed where large
chunks had been bitten out of them by larger fish, and
sometimes, when a hook appeared above water, there would be
nothing on it but a fish head. This was certainly a case of one
fish taking a mean advantage of another."

Such is the routine of trawling when weather and all the fates are
propitious. But the Banks have other stories to tell--stories of men lost
in the fog, drifting for long days and nights until the little keg of
fresh water and the scanty store of biscuit are exhausted, and then slowly
dying of starvation, alone on the trackless sea; of boats picked up in
winter with frozen bodies curled together on the floor, huddled close in a
vain endeavor to keep warm; of trawlers looking up from their work to see
towering high above them the keen prow of an ocean grayhound, and
thereafter seeing nothing that their dumb lips could tell to mortal ears.
Many a story of suffering and death the men skilled in the lore of the
Banks could tell, but most eloquent of all stories are those told by the
figures of the men lost from the fishing ports of New England. From
Gloucester alone, in 1879, two hundred and fifty fishermen were lost. In
one storm in 1846 Marblehead lost twelve vessels and sixty-six men and
boys. In 1894, and the first month of 1895, one hundred and twenty-two men
sailing out of Gloucester, were drowned. In fifty years this little town
gave to the hungry sea two thousand two hundred men, and vessels valued at
nearly two million, dollars. Full of significance is the fact that every
fishing-boat sets aside part of the proceeds of its catch for the widows'
and orphans' fund before making the final division among the men. One of
the many New England poets who have felt and voiced the pathos of life in
the fishing villages, Mr. Frank H. Sweet, has told the story of the old
and oft-repeated tragedy of the sea in these verses:

"THE WIVES OF THE FISHERS

"The boats of the fishers met the wind
And spread their canvas wide,
And with bows low set and taffrails wet
Skim onward side by side;
The wives of the fishers watch from shore,
And though the sky be blue,
They breathe a prayer into the air
As the boats go from view.

"The wives of the fishers wait on shore
With faces full of fright,
And the waves roll in with deafening din
Through the tempestuous night;
The boats of the fishers meet the wind
Cast up by a scornful sea;
But the fishermen come not again,
Though the wives watch ceaselessly."

**Transcriber's Notes:
Page 317: changed cherry to cheery.

Page 329: page ends "cry of 'Fish"; next page begins with a new paragraph,
punctuation added to read 'Fish!'

Page 330: changed volent to violent
changed trumphantly to triumphantly

CHAPTER X

THE SAILOR'S SAFEGUARDS--IMPROVEMENTS IN MARINE ARCHITECTURE--THE MAPPING
OF THE SEAS--THE LIGHTHOUSE SYSTEM--BUILDING A LIGHTHOUSE--MINOT'S LEDGE
AND SPECTACLE REEF--LIFE IN A LIGHTHOUSE--LIGHTSHIPS AND OTHER
BEACONS--THE REVENUE MARINE SERVICE--ITS FUNCTION AS A SAFEGUARD TO
SAILORS--ITS WORK IN THE NORTH PACIFIC--THE LIFE-SAVING SERVICE--ITS
RECORD FOR ONE YEAR--ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT--THE PILOTS OF NEW
YORK--THEIR HARDSHIPS AND SLENDER EARNINGS--JACK ASHORE--THE SAILORS' SNUG
HARBOR.

Into the long struggle between men and the ocean the last half century has
witnessed the entrance of System, Science and Cooperation on the side of
man. They are three elements of strength which ordinarily assure victory
to the combatant who enlists them, but complete victory over the ocean is
a thing never to be fully won. Build his ships as he may, man them as he
will, map out the ocean highways never so precisely, and mark as he may
with flaring beacons each danger point, yet in some moment of wrath the
winds and the waves will rise unconquerable and sweep all the barriers,
and all the edifices erected by man out of their path. To-day all
civilized governments join in devices and expedients for the protection
and safeguard of the mariner. Steel vessels are made unsinkable with
water-tight compartments, and officially marked with a Plimsoll load line
beneath which they must not be submerged. Charts of every ocean are
prepared under governmental supervision by trained scientists. Myriads of
lights twinkle from headland to reef all round the world. Pilots are
taught to find the way into the narrowest harbors, though they can scarce
see beyond the ship's jibboom, and electric-lighted buoys mark the
channel, while foghorns and sirens shriek their warnings through flying
scud and mist. Revenue cutters ply up and down the coast specially charged
to go swiftly to the rescue of vessels in distress, and life-saving
stations dot the beaches, fitted with every device for cheating the
breakers of their prey. The skill of marine architects, and all the
resources of Government are taxed to the utmost to defeat the wrath of
Ocean, yet withal his toll of life and property is a heavy one.

Now and again men discuss the nature of courage, and try to fix upon the
bravest deed of history. Doubtless _the_ bravest deed has no place in
history, for it must have been the act of some unknown man committed with
none to observe and recount the deed. Gallantry under the stimulus of
onlookers ready to cheer on the adventurer and to make history out of his
exploit, is not the supremest type. Surely first among the brave, though
unknown men, we must rank that navigator, who, ignorant of the compass and
even of the art of steering by the stars, pressed his shallop out beyond
sight of land, into the trackless sea after the fall of night. Such a one
braved, beside the ordinary dangers of the deep, the uncouth and mythical
terrors with which world-wide ignorance and superstition had invested it.
The sea was thought to be the domain of fierce and ravenous monsters, and
of gods quite as dangerous to men. Prodigious whirlpools, rapids, and
cataracts, quite without any physical reason for existence, were thought
to roar and roll just beyond the horizon. It is only within a few decades
that the geographies have abandoned the pleasing fiction of the
maelstrom, and a few centuries ago the sudden downpour of the waters at
the "end of the world" was a thoroughly accepted tenet of physical
geography. Yet men, adventurous and inquisitive, kept ever pushing forward
into the unknown, until now there remain no strange seas and few uncharted
and unlighted. The mariner of these days has literally plain sailing in
comparison with his forbears of one hundred and fifty years ago.

Easily first among the sailor's safeguards is the lighthouse system. That
of the United States is under the direct control of the Light House Board,
which in turn is subject to the authority of the Secretary of the
Treasury. It is the practice of every nation to light its own coast;
though foreign vessels enjoy equal advantages thereby with the ships of
the home country. But the United States goes farther. Not only does it
furnish the beacons to guide foreign ships to its ports; but, unlike Great
Britain and some other nations, it levies no charge upon the
beneficiaries. In order that American vessels might not be hampered by the
light dues imposed by foreign nations, the United States years ago bought
freedom from several states for a lump sum; but Great Britain still exacts
dues, a penny a ton, from every vessel passing a British light and
entering a British port.

The history of the lighthouses of the world is a long one, beginning with
the story of the famous Pharos, at Alexandria, 400 feet high, whose light,
according to Ptolemy, could be seen for 40 miles. Pharos long since
disappeared, overthrown, it is thought, by an earthquake. France possesses
to-day the oldest and the most impressive lighthouse--the Corduan tower,
at the mouth of the Gironde, begun in the fifteenth century. In the United
States, the lighthouse system dates only from 1715, when the first
edifice of this character was begun at the entrance to Boston harbor. It
was only an iron basket perched on a beacon, in which were burned "fier
bales of pitch and ocum," as the colonial records express it Sometimes
tallow candles illuminated this pioneer light of the establishment of
which announcement was made in the Boston _News_, of September 17, 1716,
in this wise: "Boston. By Vertue of an Act of Assembly made in the First
Year of His Majesty's Reign, For Building & Maintaining a Light House upon
the Great Brewster (called Beacon Island) at the Entrance of the Harbor of
Boston, in order to prevent the loss of the Lives & Estates of His
Majesty's Subjects; the said Light House has been built; And on Fryday
last the 14th Currant the Light was kindled; which will be very useful for
all Vessels going out and coming in to the Harbor of Boston for which all
Masters shall pay to the Receiver of Impost, One Peny per Ton Inwards, and
another Peny Outwards, except Coasters, who are to pay Two Shillings each
at their clearance Out. And all Fishing Vessels, Wood Sloops, &c. Five
Shillings each by the Year."

When the United States Government was formed, with the adoption of the
Constitution in 1789, there were just eight lights on the coast, namely,
Portsmouth Light, N.H.; the Boston Light, mentioned above; Guerney Light,
near Plymouth, Mass.; Brand Point Light, on Nantucket; Beaver Tail Light,
R.I.; Sandy Hook Light; Cape Henlopen Light, Del.; and Charleston Main
Light, on Morris Island, S.C. The Pacific coast, of course, was dark. So,
too, was the Gulf of Mexico, though already a considerable shipping was
finding its way thither. Of the multitudes of lights that gleam and
sparkle in Long Island Sound or on the banks of the navigable rivers that
open pathways into the interior, not one was then established. But as
soon as a national government took the duty in hand, the task of lighting
the mariner's pathway was pressed with vigor. By 1820 the eight lights had
increased to fifty-five. To-day there are 1306 lighthouses and lighted
beacons, and forty-five lightships. As for buoys, foghorns, day beacons,
etc., they are almost uncounted. The board which directs this service was
organized in 1852. It consists of two officers of high rank in the navy,
two engineer officers of the army, and two civilians of high scientific
attainments. One officer of the army and one of the navy are detailed as
secretaries. The Secretary of the Treasury is _ex officio_ president of
the board. Each of the sixteen districts into which the country is
divided is inspected by an army and a navy officer, and a small navy of
lighthouse tenders perform the duty of carrying supplies and relief to the
lighthouses up and down our three coasts.

[Illustration: MINOT'S LEDGE LIGHT]

The planning of a lighthouse to stand on a submerged reef, in a stormy
sea, is an engineering problem which requires extraordinary qualities of
technical skill and scientific daring for its solution, while to raise the
edifice, to seize the infrequent moments of low calm water for thrusting
in the steel anchors and laying the heavy granite substructure on which
shall rise the slender stone column that shall defy the assaults of wind
and wave, demands coolness, determination, and reckless courage. Many
lights have been built at such points on our coast, but the ponderous
tower of Minot's Ledge, at the entrance to Boston Harbor, may well be
taken as a type.

Minot's Ledge is three miles off the mouth of Boston Bay, a jagged reef of
granite, wholly submerged at high tide, and showing a scant hundred yards
of rock above the water at the tide's lowest stage. It lies directly in
the pathway of ships bound into Boston, and over it, on even calm days,
the breakers crash in an incessant chorus. Two lighthouses have reared
their heads here to warn away the mariner. The first was completed in
1848, an octagonal tower, set on wrought-iron piles extending five feet
into the rock. The skeleton structure was expected to offer little surface
to the shock of the waves, and the wrought iron of which it was built
surely seemed tough enough to resist any combined force of wind and water;
but in an April gale in 1851 all was washed away, and two brave keepers,
who kept the lamp burning until the tower fell, went with it. Late at
night, the watchers on the shore at Cohasset, three miles away, heard the
tolling of the lighthouse bell, and through the flying scud caught
occasional glimpses of the light; but morning showed nothing left of the
structure except twisted stumps of iron piles, bent and gnarled, as though
the waves which tore them to pieces had been harder than they.

Then, for a time, a lightship tossed and tugged at its cables to warn
shipping away from Minot's Ledge. Old Bostonians may still remember the
gallant Newfoundland dog that lived on the ship, and, when excursion boats
passed, would plunge into the sea and swim about, barking, until the
excursionists would throw him tightly rolled newspapers, which he would
gather in his jaws, and deliver to the lightship keepers to be dried for
the day's reading. But, while the lightship served for a temporary beacon,
a new tower was needed that might send the warning pencil of light far out
to sea. Minot's was too treacherous a reef and too near a populous ocean
highway to be left without the best guardian that science could devise.
Accordingly, the present stone tower was planned and its construction
begun in 1855. The problem before the designer was no easy one. The famous
Eddystone and Skerryvore lighthouses, whose triumphs over the sea are
related in English verse and story, were easier far to build, for there
the foundation rock is above water at every low tide, while at Minot's
Ledge the bedrock on which the base of the tower rests is below the level
of low tide most of the year. The working season could only be from April
1 to September 15. Nominally, that is almost six months; but in the first
season the sea permitted exactly 130 hours' work; in the second season
157, and in the third season, 130 hours and 21 minutes. The rest of the
time the roaring surf held Minot's Ledge for its own. Nor was this all.
After two years' work, the piles and debris of the old lighthouse had
been cleared away, and a new iron framework, intended to be anchored in
solid masonry, had been set, when up came a savage gale from the
northeast; and when it cleared all was swept away. Then the spirit of the
builder wavered, and he began to doubt that any structure built by men
could withstand the powers of nature at Minot's Ledge. But, in time, the
truth appeared. A bark, the _New Eagle_, heavy laden with cotton, had been
swept right over the reef, and grounded at Cohasset. Examination showed
that she had carried away in her hull the framework of the new tower.
Three years' heart-trying work were necessary before the first cut stone
could be laid upon the rock. In the meantime, on a great table at
Cohasset, a precise model of the new tower was built, each stone cut to
the exact shape, on a scale of one inch to the foot, and laid in mortar.
This model completed, the soil on the hillside near by was scraped away.
The granite rock thus laid bare was smoothed and leveled off into a great
flat circle, and there, stone by stone, the tower was built exactly as in
time it should rise in the midst of the seething cauldron of foam three
miles out at sea. While the masons ashore worked at the tower, the men at
the reef watched their chance, and the moment a square yard of ledge was
out of water at the fall of the tide, they would leap from their boats,
and begin cutting it. A circle thirty feet in diameter had to be leveled,
and iron rods sunk into it as anchorages for the masonry. To do that took
just three years of time, though actually less than twenty-five days of
working time. From the time the first cut stone was laid until the
completion of the tower, was three years and three months, though in all
there were but 1102 working hours.

One keeper and three assistants guard the light over Minot's Ledge. Three
miles away across the sea, now blue and smiling, now black and wrathful,
they can see the little group of dwellings on the Cohasset shore which the
Government provides for them, and which shelter their families. The term
of duty on the rocks is two weeks; at the end of each fortnight two happy
men go ashore and two grumpy ones come off; that is, if the weather
permits a landing, for keepers have been stormbound for as long as seven
weeks. The routine of duty is much the same in all of the lighthouses. By
night there must be unceasing watch kept of the great revolving light;
and, if there be other lights within reach of the keeper's glass, a watch
must be kept on them as well, and any eclipse, however brief, must be
noted in the lighthouse log. By day the lens must be rubbed laboriously
with a dry cloth until it shines like the facets of a diamond. Not at all
like the lens we are familiar with in telescopes and cameras is this
scientifically contrived device. It is built up of planes and prisms of
the finest flint glass, cut and assembled according to abtruse
mathematical calculations so as to gather the rays of light from the great
sperm-oil lamp into parallel rays, a solid beam, which, in the case of
Minot's Ledge light, pierces the night to a distance of fifteen miles. On
foggy days, too, the keepers must toll the fog-bell, or, if the light be
on the mainland, operate the steam siren which sends its hoarse bellow
booming through the gray mist to the alert ears of the sailor miles away.

The regulations do not prescribe that the keeper of a light shall hold
himself ready to go to the assistance of castaways or of wrecked vessels;
but, as a matter of fact, not a few of the most heroic rescues in the
history of the coast have been performed by light-keepers. In the number
of lives saved a woman--Ida Lewis, the keeper of the Limerock Light in
Newport Harbor--leads all the rest. But there is hardly any light so
placed that a boat can be launched that has not a story to tell of brave
men putting out in frail boats in the teeth of a roaring gale to bring in
some exhausted castaways, to carry a line to some stranded ship, or to
guide some imperiled pleasure-seekers to safety.

While the building of the Minot's Ledge light had in it more of the
picturesque element than attaches to the record of construction of the
other beacons along the coast of the United States, there are but few
erected on exposed points about which the builders could not tell some
curious stories of difficult problems surmounted, or dire perils met and
conquered. The Great Lakes, on which there are more than 600 light
stations, offer problems of their own to the engineer. Because of the
shallowness of their waters, a gale speedily kicks up a sea which old
Ocean itself can hardly outdo, and they have an added danger in that
during the winter they are frozen to such a depth that navigation is
entirely abandoned. The lights, too, are abandoned during this season, the
Lighthouse Board fixing a period in the early winter for extinguishing
them and another in spring for reilluminating them. But between these
dates the structures stand exposed to the tremendous pressure of such
shifting floes of ice as are not found on the ocean outside of the Arctic
regions. The lake lighthouse, the builders of which had most to apprehend
from this sort of attack, is that at Spectacle Reef, in Lake Huron, near
the Straits of Mackinaw. It is ten miles from land, standing on a
limestone reef, and in the part of the lakes where the ice persists
longest and moves out with the most resistless crush. To protect this
lighthouse, it was necessary to build a rampart all about it, against
which the ice floes in the spring, as the current moves them down into
Lake Huron, are piled up in tumultuous disorder. In order to get a
foundation for the lighthouse, a huge coffer-dam was built, which was
launched like a ship, towed out to the reef and there grounded. When it
was pumped out the men worked inside with the water surrounding them
twelve to fourteen feet above their heads. Twenty months of work, or three
years in time, were occupied in erecting this light. Once in the spring,
when the keepers returned after the closed season to prepare for the
summer's navigation, they found the ice piled thirty feet against the
tower, and seventy feet above the doorway, so that they were compelled, in
order to enter the lighthouse, to cut through a huge iceberg of which it
was the core.

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