The Breath of the Southern Seas

The only way to really get out of doors is to push off fifteen miles from shore into salt water. Our planet is a globe of water through which five or six big lumps of dirt and rock project. We call these lumps of exposed earth, continents, and imagine they are the world, when as a matter of fact they cut a comparatively small figure in the total history of our sphere.

The man who does not know salt water is lopsided and undeveloped.

I have known people who spent all their days on one spot of ground on one of these land lumps and thought they could teach the children of men the deepest truths of universal life.

Has a landlubber lived?

The sea is our most expressive symbol of the eternal, and the truest test of reality. Fifty cents may pass for a dollar in the interior, but when it strikes salt water, it is worth just fifty cents.

It is so with men.

I shall never forget the overwhelming sense of my own littleness the first view of the ocean brought me. I had graduated from college, and owned a piece of pig-skin on which was recorded the fact that I was a Master of Arts. One day I climbed a sand mountain on the Cape Hatteras reef and looked out over fifty miles of roaring white breakers beneath whose angry tread I could feel the earth tremble. As far as the eye could reach they came bounding, hissing and leaping after one another. At first I was stunned, then humbled, and at last moved to love and worship. I took off my hat and felt the breath of the Infinite sweep my soul.

A boat is the only instrument by which man can move over any considerable part of the earth's surface.

When I bought my first boat, and became amphibious, I was an efficient inhabitant of the world. The summer before I had chartered a schooner-rigged sharpie, sailed bravely out of a shallow inlet from the Pamlico Sound, skimmed up the coast fifteen miles to the Oregon Inlet, and tried to come in. Caught by a squall in the act of threading our way through the shoals of this dangerous and crooked channel, we were held there for twenty-three hours between two mountains of breakers with only a quarter inch rusty chain anchoring us to life.

I said then that if I ever owned a boat it should have a wheel at one end of it and a machine to drive it. So I bought a naphtha launch in New York.

We named her the Chattahoochee for the
memory of the river on whose beautiful banks I made love to my sweetheart. She was a powerful little craft -- I mean the launch, of course. For two years we ran her, and, within her sphere, she was ever faithful. After nine years' experience, I am thoroughly convinced that the only safe and reliable power for a small craft (up to twelve horse-power) is this naphtha engine which works on the principle of steam. It cost me several thousand dollars to learn this, but I know it now, and I do not need any further information on the subject.

We sold the Chattahoochee after two years' service for $850. She cost $900 originally. Then I built a more powerful sea boat on the model of the U. S. Life Saving Surf Boat, decked her over, gave her a nice little cabin with two berths, rigged her with a small cat-sail and put a 2 H.-P. naphtha engine in her. She proved the best boat for her inches I ever saw. I could go out twenty miles at sea, and
fish all day without a fear, and if a storm struck us, she came scurrying home over miles of coaming seas like a gull. She cost me $700, and I sold her for more than she cost, to build a larger and more powerful auxiliary craft on the same model. Then I made the important discovery that a boat has a soul, and that a fool could not build one. This boat cost me $1,850, and five minutes after she was launched I wished to sell her. I had placed in her a 10 H.-P. gasolene engine of the explosive type.

I worked on that engine two hours every morning before starting, and never went out of harbour knowing when I would get back. She had the devil in her from the start. She wouldn't sail, she wouldn't run under her engine, she wouldn't keep still at her anchor in harbour, and she would lie down in a half sea like a balky horse.

At last I found a man who was looking for that particular kind of engine in a boat of
exactly her make. I sold him the boat for $1,200, a hundred dollars less than the hull cost me, took his note for the whole amount, and gave him the engine.

He has never liked me since.

Then I built the Swannanoa, a model naphtha cruiser, in the shops at Morris Heights. She was 50 feet long, 10 feet beam, had four berths in her saloon, a neat galley, and toilet room. She was finished like a piano in mahogany and upholstered in silk and plush. She was a thing of beauty, and in every way a success except that she was too fine for comfort in rough cruising on fishing and hunting trips. After one season in Virginia, I ran her back to New York and sold her for $4,500 within two hours after she touched the pier.

The original cost of the genuine naphtha launch is high, but they can be sold at a small loss. A thing is worth after all what other people will give for it.

I had now served five years as an apprentice at boat building and sailing, and had found out what I wanted and what I did not want. While I have never given up the naphtha launch -- I still keep a 4 H.-P. hunting knockabout for short trips and a 2H.-P. for the river -- I determined to build a real yacht.

My five years' experience had taught me the limitations of small-power craft, and the Governmental regulations made a steam yacht impossible. I desired to have a boat of ocean-going capacity of which I could be the legal owner and sailing master. A millionaire may buy a steamer and hire a crew of efficient navigators and seamen, but a man is never a yachtsman until he is the sailing master of his own craft and knows the responsibility of giving orders from her deck that may mean life or death.

In no way can a man so accurately express his character and temperament as on
the boat he builds if he has had sufficient experience to understand the language of the sea.

I planned a schooner yacht of ocean-going tonnage, yet of such light draught she could thread her way amid the labyrinths of sand shoals, mud-flats, marshes and creeks that make the home of the wild fowl in Tidewater Virginia.

Five things I tried to express in this boat -- solid comfort, safety, economy, utility and beauty. I planned her 80 feet long, 20 feet beam, and 3 feet draught; and the lowest estimate I could get on her in New York and vicinity was $11,000, without sails.

This sum was beyond my purse. I came down to the Chesapeake and found Mr. E. J. Tull, of Pocomoke [City], Maryland, an efficient builder of merchant work boats. He built her hull. Her iron and brass work I had done in New York, and her sails were made at Crisfield. When she was finished and
launched she had cost me $3,500, and I put a naphtha tender on her davits at an additional cost of $600.

The decks fore and aft took 30 feet of her length. I built a cabin over the 50 feet amidships. This gave me head room of six feet six inches, and guaranteed ample light and ventilation for winter and summer cruises in Southern waters. The flush deck schooner gives poor light and ventilation. I placed in her forty-six bull's-eye windows, one row in her cabin walls, and one row in her hull below decks. Her interior is always as bright and cheerful as a house. The 50-foot house gave me on one side of the companion way a triangular toilet room five feet long, and the other side a similar room for wash basin and water cooler. The main saloon is 16 feet square with four seat berths and is lighted by sixteen windows. It is large enough for a sideboard, writing desk, music box, piano, a large dining-table, arm chairs and a stove.

Next to the saloon cabin are two large state-rooms on either side of the hall, each 12 X 8 feet, containing full beds, writing desk, a case of drawers, a clothes closet and wash basin with running water. Next to these is another large state-room 8 X 8. Opposite the galley is the refrigeration and the cold storage pantry, 4 X 8 feet, and alongside of this the first-mate's state-room opening into the crew's quarters, 8 X 16 feet. Under the forward deck are the oil-tanks for naphtha and kerosene, the chain lockers and crew's toilet room.

In summer an awning, 80 feet long, covers the entire ship, and iron ventilators are set in openings over the saloon and each state-room to catch every breath of wind. Her interior is finished with pine paneling pained white, trimmed in gold; and her upholstery is in dark scarlet corduroy. The odd spaces
are utilized in the construction of eighteen closets and twelve large drawers. Under her after decks are built three water-tanks which give running water in four state-rooms, the wash-room, galley and crew's quarters.

I attained safety in constructing her of the best and the heaviest material. Her outside skin is of 2-inch heart pine, her ribs 4-inch oak doubled, and her inside skin 2-inch heart pine. Her planking outside and inside is fastened to her ribs with 6-inch galvanized iron spikes. Her crossbeams overhead are 6 and 8-inch heart pine. Her masts are single sticks. The foremast 80 feet and the mainmast 72 feet, and she is rigged with the Chesapeake Buckeye Sharp Sail, the safest and most powerful sail that can be put on a boat for heavy work in winter gales.

This Buckeye rig gave me the most economical yacht that could be built. It costs only $30 to put a new set of running rigging on her, and I never hire more than two men
and a boy for the crew. I pay one of these men, the first mate, $50 a month. He is an experienced sea-dog and an expert hunter and guide. The cook, the second man, costs $16 a month, and a cabin boy, $8. We can keep her in commission six months of the year at a total cost, including provisions, of $750, which is cheaper than we can live ashore.

Such a craft is the most useful boat in Virginia waters a man can build. She will go into more places and do more things than any other boat of her size afloat. She is so powerfully built that she stands up straight on a sand-bar or mud-flat as comfortably as afloat and without damage. We can anchor on the feeding grounds of wild fowl where the tide leaves her high and dry twice a day, and stay as long as we like. She is a powerful sea boat when she drops her centreboard and draws 10 feet of water, and if overtaken in such a storm at sea that she could not live, she can
lift her board, and in 3 feet of water walk up on the beach and land her passengers in safety to them, if she lose her own life.

That she has beautiful lines I leave her picture to say.

The only weakness of such a craft is that she is not so fast as the full gaff-rigged schooner in the light airs of summer. And yet in four years' cruising in Virginia waters I have never brushed up against any boat of her size of any rig that has been able to keep up with her, though I have never tried her with anything except working vessels.

It is a peculiar pleasure, as well as an elemental education in the fundamental things of life, to fit out such a boat for a month's cruise. It takes her crew of three about a week to fit her sails, fill her water-tanks, coal and wood bunkers, and stock her refrigerator and pantry. We make list after list of the things needed, and when ten miles off shore always find we have left behind some of the
most important of the little things we are sure to need first. My wife has become an expert at this work with four years' experience. The man who loves the water is thrice happy if his wife has similar tastes or has the adaptability necessary to acquire them. I can safely say that the happiest hours of our married life have been on board this schooner yacht. On her long graceful bow are carved in oak on either side the smiling face of a negro looking at a row of flying ducks, symbolic of her name and habitat.

I was anxious to get the opinion of my sea-dog, Captain George Isdell, on this boat when he first brought her home from her cradle at Pocomoke where she was born in December, 1897.

His face was wreathed in smiles. Such men are always blunt and plain spoken to the point of rudeness when they talk about the qualities of a boat. They find her weak
spots in twenty-four hours, and tell you with authority what she is worth.

"How is she, George?" I asked as I sprang up her steps the day she arrived.

She's a Jim-dandy!" he cried with a grin. "She goes through the water sliker'n a eel. She stands right up in a blow and leaves a white streak behind her as far as you can see."

And so I found her.

When all is ready for the winter cruise, and we had said good-bye for a month to the little world on shore, we began to set her big white sails.

I take a hand with the boys clearing her decks and storing everything snug. Her gunning boats and decoys are slung in on deck and her tenders on her davits.

"It looks nasty in the nor'west -- we're goin' to have weather," was George's prophecy, as we swung the big forty-foot boom of her foresail up from its saddle and lifted it to the highest reach of her canvas.

"Well, we'll hustle and get to the grounds and then let the north wind howl," I replied. "That's what we want for the ducks."

As we swung out into the channel and headed for the Chesapeake Bay, black scurrying clouds from the north came sweeping down and obscured the sun. In a quarter of an hour the bay was a white smother. I heard her new steel shrouds crack as her tall masts heeled over and tested their temper.

"That's only the lanyards finding themselves," said George.

"Do you think we'll have to reef her?" I asked.

"Na-sir, she don't know it's a blowin' with only them three sails. She wants a thirty-mile breeze to show you what she can do."

And we got it.

She swept down the dark waters of the bay like a great white startled swan, her
lower row of windows under water, leaving a white thread of foam behind her that you could see for a mile.

"Time her now between these seven-mile buoys!" cried George, as we flashed by a red can bobbing up and down in a mass of spray.

I looked at my watch. Heavens, how she flew! She was alive, and the wind seemed the breath of her joyous soul. As I held her wheel, I could feel the beat of her heart and the quiver of her nerves. When I moved it, she was as sensitive to my hand as a maiden to the touch of her lover. There is something about sailboats that steam craft can never imitate, something that links them to Nature and makes their movements part of the throb of universal life. The man who has felt his heart quicken to the rhythm of this joy will never forget it, nor prove false to the love born in that hour.

"Now, your watch again!" cried George as we flashed past another buoy.

"Twenty-eight minutes," I answered.

"Seven miles in twenty-eight minutes; she's a peach! That's mor'n fourteen miles an hour. There ain't a boat afloat can beat her in a gale."

In four hours and a half we made the forty mile run, crossing the long mud-flats with only the jib set. She swung to her anchor at sundown on the ducking grounds, and when her jib ran down with a crash, a great flock of brant rose with a chorus of protest that rang over the waters like the baying of a thousand hounds. The flock was two miles long and three hundred feet deep and their flight darkened the sky like a storm cloud.

"Never mind, old boys, we'll give you something to talk about to-morrow if this wind holds to the nor'west," was George's answer to their cry.