The life-raft—A travelled hen—Prussian adventure—American—Going up-stairs—Portsmouth—Fair visitor—Cruises—A review—Questions.

The ‘Nonpareil’ American life-raft was in Cowes after her Atlantic voyage of forty-three days at sea. Two of her three adventurous crew were Germans, who could speak English only imperfectly, and the third was a Yankee. This uncomfortable voyage was undertaken partly to promote the sale in England of these rafts, and partly to pay the three men by fees from visitors, while they could see Europe themselves at a cheap rate. One of Mr. White’s steamers towed the raft in front of the Castle, where the members of the Royal Yacht Squadron Club have their spacious house, with a sea wall over the waves.

From the accompanying sketch it will be seen that she is schooner-rigged, and very coarsely rigged too. Gigantic flags and streamers overwhelm her masts, but fourteen of us on her deck seemed to sink the buoyant life-raft only an inch more in the water.

The raft

She is made of three long tubes of india-rubber blown up by bellows; and, when the air is out, these can be packed away snugly, weighing in all about a ton, and intended to be inflated and launched from a ship’s deck in case of disaster. A small raft in the capacity of a dingey, but formed like the other, was towed beside her, and as a special favour I was piloted to go away in this, which was easily worked by oars or sculls upon outriggers.

The men had for shelter during their long voyage only a small waterproof tent on the deck, with a gutter round its edge to catch the rainwater, and so to replenish their supply, kept in bags on each side, and now handed about in glasses as “travelled liquor,” to wash down biscuits, still surplus from the “sea store.” Their cooking apparatus was at first worked by petroleum, but this speedily burned the metal out, and they were driven to manufacture a very ramshackle sort of oil-lamp, fed by the oil for their ship-light and their compass, and by some supplied from passing vessels.

Two centre-boards, like long narrow doors, placed diagonally between the web joinings of the tubes, dipped into the water, and served as a keel, so that when we cast her off from the steamer, the raft managed to sail a little over to windward. The whole raft being collapsible when the air is driven out, can be readily carried aboard ship, and for this it is valuable, but many other and better rafts compete with this for favour.

The actual substratum, or raft proper, seemed to be strong and substantial, but the sails and gear were miserably contrived, and worse executed, in preparation for a long dreary voyage of six weeks, drifting in wet and weariness, which I could not but contrast with the pleasant six weeks just passed in the Rob Roy.

The most interesting thing on the raft was a passenger, who had come on board her when about a thousand miles away in the sea. This was an old hen, given to the crew by a passing vessel. It was a common brown, dowdy, grandmother-looking hen, and in this prosaic state it was very odd and incongruous, tethered to the deck by a bit of tarred lanyard, and pecking away till you looked hard at it, then it cocked up one eye with an air that said, “Why are you staring at me?”

Among the visitors to the raft was a wealthy gentleman, who surveyed the whole with interest, and at last fixed his eye upon the barn-door fowl, and asked if it was to be sold. “Yes, sir, for a hundred guineas,” was the answer; but he deferred any immediate purchase by saying, “If I thought that eating that hen’s eggs would make me as plucky as you are, I might buy it.” As for being “plucky” in the matter, what will not men risk for money? The risks run by many sailors in the rotten coffins that bring our scuttles of coals round Yarmouth Sands are quite as great as the hazard on this raft, and their forecastles are about as comfortable as the tent upon it. If it were not on such a serious subject as risk to human life, one might well be amused to hear the wrong estimates of the dangers in various sorts of voyages which are so hastily expressed by benevolent people who are ignorant of the whole matter.

I advised the raft-men to take her to Berlin, for exhibition as “the German raft from America,” for such she is; but they persisted in their scheme for showing her in London, where folks are already tired of “flotsam and jetsam” from the West. Their enterprise failed; and the poor Germans had to depart from England deep in debt instead of laden with money, and their raft was left for sale.

Since the ‘Nonpareil,’ there has come to England from America another floating monstrosity, a boat called the ‘John T. Ford,’ worse “found” in every sense than the others, and which had three men drowned on the passage, and one nearly starved—a sad finale to the failures of the ‘Henrietta,’ ‘Red, White, and Blue,’ and ‘Nonpariel,’ as speculations. Another craft came in with man and wife as crew. Finally in July, the two Andrews came in the ‘Nautilus.’

Every day at Cowes the yawl Rob Roy was under way for a sail, and sometimes in good breezes she would thread in and out among thickly clustered yachts, so as to show her handiness. Certainly, without previous practice, it would be highly improper to attempt this sort of cruising; for the yachts, with bowsprits run out, and jiggers and mizen-booms projecting, are at anchor here on the implied understanding that no one will wantonly endanger a collision by sailing about in the crowd, merely for fun. After practice, however, for weeks in the same craft, the operation of guiding her safely through a maze of boats, and on a strong cross-tide, becomes like the unnoticed and nearly involuntary muscular efforts of the body which carry us safely through a crowd on shore. I recollect once seeing some very dignified Arab Chiefs, who for the first time in their lives had to go up-stairs, and their awkward stumbling, even in the ascent of a few steps, showed how much our nerves and limbs have to learn before we can do so ordinary a thing without even a thought.

One day the Rob Roy sailed to Portsmouth, and into all the creeks and crannies, and through all the channels and guts she could find in that complicated waterway, and then anchored near the ‘Duke of Wellington,’ with the old ‘Victory’ close beside. There also was the ‘Serapis,’ one of the magnificent troop-ships, of a size and build found to be the best success of our last naval efforts. By the quay was the ‘Warrior,’ the first sea-going iron-clad, and of beauty indisputable, and the celebrated ‘Wyvern,’ with its tripod masts. Others later made, and always more and more stumpy and square, need a strong pressure of utilitarian conviction to restrain us from pronouncing that they are downright ugly. But we shall soon become reconciled, and then enamoured, of forms that are associated with proved utility, and the grand three-decker of our youth will look as clumsy then as the ships of Queen Elizabeth do now, which seem to have carried, each of them, a lot of toy guns, and a country mansion on its deck.

The church service on board old ‘Victory’ was most interesting to take part in when Sunday came round, and next day her captain came to visit us in his well-manned gig, which, indeed, was longer than our boat, and he said that the Rob Roy “fulfilled a dream of his youth.” This from a “swell of the ocean” was a high compliment to our little yawl.

A boat full of boys, from the Portsmouth Ragged School, sang hymns on the water in the lovely evening.

Among the other remarkable visitors to the yawl was a pleasant young lady, who sat in a very pretty boat, rowed by a trusty man. She had hovered round and round the Rob Roy with a cautious propriety, which, however, could not conceal a certain wistful gaze as the narrowing spiral of her course brought her nearer at each turn. My little dingey was the attraction, and the lady confessed boldly that she “would so like to have a boat like that to row in.” Next she consented to see dinner cooked on the Rob Roy, and—just because she was a lady—she complied with the request not to fly away when I began to eat. Finally, as curiosity increases by gratifying it, the good-humoured girl (with the full consent of the trusty guardian) accepted one mouthful of the newly cooked rations, stewed steak, on Rob Roy’s fork, and then suddenly it had become “very late, and time to join papa.”

The variety of life during a fortnight here, yet all afloat, was abounding. One day sailing in company with other small boats up the winding Medina, or tacking about, close-reefed, in rough water; the next day cruising in some splendid schooner away and away towards the Needles. Every one was kind and hospitable, and often dipping their ensigns to the yawl. Surely we have named her cruise wrongly as “the voyage alone;” and, indeed, I could scarcely get time in my cabin for a glance at a paper, to see the news and doings of the land folk, bricked up ashore: their wars and congresses and the general rasping they get for it all by a hard squeeze in the press at the end of every week, to keep them from forgetting their own discomforts or their neighbours’ ills, for Parliament being dispersed in vacation, there is the fourth estate to legislate by public acclaim.

Most remarkable it is, and commendable, and a feature only a few years old, that the principal morning and evening papers should take up one after another of philanthropic institutions, and even of individual cases, and advocate them vigorously, while they spare no wrong from censure, and freely discuss remedies, which are much harder to talk of than any wrongs. Philanthropy is made popular by the press, and many a good worker is cheered by this powerful help. Blessings on their type!

But on the other hand, lest we should subside into doing good, hoping better, and making the best of things in a practical way, the whole has to be reviewed at the end of each week by a hard hebdomadal board, on which a dozen clear thinkers sit aside and criticise all the rest of us. Perhaps it is a part of the irreverence of our times that one should gradually lose awe in the presence of this weekly printed wisdom. Or is it that experience finds types are just as fallible as tongues for telling truth, and that years give us hardiness even in the presence of that most mighty, wise, and impudent of all earthworms,—man, that judges the very God of Heaven.

However, the brilliancy of these critics flares out and attracts, and it ought to attract, though it need not dazzle, even if it be the brilliancy of the electric light, warming as little, and darkening one side as much. Their thoughts reach thousands, and without the answers: thus to thousands they are judgments, not arguments. It is a tremendous responsibility to wield such powers, and perhaps it is not felt by a corporate body as each one of them would acknowledge for himself.

It is a good sign of them, or of the age, that they should yield to man’s innate love of continuous detraction?

Is not their own shibboleth the hardest of all, the most shifting, the most inaudibly pronounced by themselves, if it be not a universal “No,” and yet the most rigorously insisted upon? Is there not a “cant” of the vague and complacent denial, quite as bad as that of the too positive and assumed belief? Will it cure the weakness of the milk-and-water they complain of to pour in mustard and vinegar? and would not any one man, with all these bristling points of sarcasm, dispraise, and bitterness, be about as pleasant in social life as a porcupine? Surely this powerful literary lever could be plied to raise heavier stones, and to settle them in goodly order. Let others grub in the rubbish; but the leading organ of the week could sound with a grander harmony, more pleasant, and not less piquant if it gave rhythm to the mind of England in a forward march against misery.

Perhaps to write thus is too daring; for while Saturn masticates his own offspring it is a bold child that complains to his face; but it is better to be called rash than to be proved timid.

Meantime we are nearing Cowes in our sail from Portsmouth, and must mind the rocks and beacons rather than soliloquies, for this one question may be put after all:—Is it right to moralize at all in a log-book? and will not the reader say, that when there is not a storm in the yawl, or a swamp, there is sure to come a sermon?