Читать книгу Recollections of a Busy Life: Being the Reminiscences of a Liverpool Merchant 1840-1910 - Forwood William Bower - Страница 5

Leaving school I entered the office of Salisbury, Turner and Earle, one of the oldest and leading brokerage houses in the town. The partners were Mr. Alderman John H. Turner (remarkable for the smallness of his stature), Mr. Horace Turner, and Mr. Henry Grey. My senior apprentice was the late Colonel Morrison. I had not been very long in this office when I contracted a very severe cold, the result of being out all night on Ben Lomond. I had gone up with my father and a party of friends to see the sunset; on the way down I lost my way, and finding myself with darkness coming on, in very boggy land, I sat down on a rock to await daylight. Heavy rain fell and I was soaked through, which resulted in a cold that took such a strong hold of me that the doctor ordered me a sea voyage, and on the 20th November, 1857, I set sail on board the clipper ship "Red Jacket," for Melbourne. The gold fever was at its height, and the passenger trade with Australia was very active. Our ship was crowded with passengers; she was the crack clipper of the day, and carried a double crew, that she might be enabled to carry sail until the last moment. We had a very pleasant passage and beat the record, making Port Phillip Heads in sixty-three days.

I visited the gold fields at Ballarat, making the journey from Geelong by stage-coach, drawn by six horses, the roads being mere tracks cut through the bush. I descended several of the mines; at this time the alluvial deposits had been worked out, and most of the mines were being worked at a considerable depth. At Melbourne I stayed with Mr. Strickland, at a charming villa on the banks of the Yarra-Yarra. Leaving Melbourne, I took a steamer for Sydney, where my father had many business friends, and had a very good time yachting in the bay and riding up country. I managed to lose myself in the bush, and for a whole day was a solitary wanderer, not knowing where I was. It was a period of strange sensations and of much anxiety. Eventually, late in the evening I came across a shepherd, who gave me the best of his simple fare and guided me to the nearest village.

From Australia I sailed in a small barque, the "Queen of the Avon," for Valparaiso; she was only 360 tons register, and I was the only passenger.

The voyage across to Valparaiso was eventful. We had bad weather throughout, and a heavy cyclone which did us great damage about the decks. We were hove to for two days with a tarpaulin in the mizzen rigging. We sailed right through the storm centre, where we had no wind, but a terrific and very confused sea, and here we saw hundreds of sea-birds of all kinds. At Valparaiso we obtained a charter to load cocoa at Guayaquil. We had a lovely cruise up the coast, and the sail up the river to Guayaquil was heavenly; we had the panorama of the Andes on our right, with the richly verdured island of Puna on the other hand; flocks of flamingoes were wading in the shallow sea channels, and pelicans were busy fishing along the margins of the sandbanks. At Guayaquil we had some good crocodile shooting, not the easiest game to bag. These reptiles had to be stalked in the most approved fashion; although they lay seemingly basking and asleep in the sun, with their great mouths wide open, their ears were very much on the alert, and it was most difficult to come within shot. We succeeded better from a boat than from the land, for by allowing the boat to drift with the tide we were able to get within easy shot without being heard.

I visited Bodegas and some of the Indian villages at the foot of the Andes. The whole country was very interesting, and very rich in tropical birds and flowers. There were too many snakes to make travelling quite comfortable, but in time we found they all did their best to get away from us, and we gained more confidence.

I had a little adventure in Guayaquil which might have been very unpleasant. There was a revolution, and the government troops had only just regained possession of the city; I had the misfortune to walk unwittingly through a barricade, which consisted of some half-dozen ragged black soldiers, who quite failed to suggest to me a military outpost. I was at once arrested and taken to the jail. Here I remained for some hours surrounded by the most horrible looking ruffians, and was in mortal dread of the time when I should be locked up with them in one of the foul dens which led off the court-yard. I was fortunately set free through the kind intervention of an American who had been a witness of my capture and incarceration.

At Guayaquil we loaded a cargo of cocoa and sailed for Falmouth for orders. We arrived off this port in November, 1859, after an uneventful voyage of 110 days. We tacked the ship off the Manacle Rocks, at the entrance to the harbour; the wind flew round to the east, and we were driven out again into the chops of the channel; it was twenty-four days before we again saw Falmouth. We fought our way against a succession of easterly gales, sometimes driven out as far west as the Fastnet. The fleet of ships kept out by the long continued easterly winds was very large, and the Admiralty was obliged to dispatch relief ships with stores for their succour.

No one who has not experienced an easterly gale in the Channel can form any idea of the toil of a constant fight against a succession of heavy gales, cold and bleak with sleet and snow. Sometimes the wind would decrease and we were able to make some headway, and perhaps work our way within sight of the Scilly Islands, raising our hopes of an early arrival at our port, then another gale would spring up and drive us back again to the west of Ireland, and the same thing was repeated over and over again. The Channel was full of ships detained by adverse gales, and the home markets were disorganised by the lack of supplies of raw produce. All this is now a thing of the past, steamers are independent of head winds, and winter easterly gales no longer strike terror into the hearts of shipowners and merchants.

Whilst on this voyage, to relieve the monotony of the daily routine of sea life, I taught myself navigation, took my trick at the wheel, and had my place aloft when reefing next to the weather earing, where I worked with an old man-of-war's man named Amos. Amos was a noble specimen of the old-fashioned British sailor. He was the king of the fo'castle, and while he was on hand no swearing or bad language was heard. The knowledge I then obtained of navigation and seamanship has been most valuable to me through life. It was a great opportunity, which I was wise enough to avail myself of. During the whole time I was on board this ship – nearly eight months – I never missed taking my trick at the wheel, or going aloft to reef. I well remember laying out on the fore yardarm, off Cape Horn, for two hours, while we got a close reef tied. We had to take up belaying pins to knock the frozen snow and ice off the sail before we could do anything, and the ship was labouring so heavily in the seaway that our task was most difficult. In navigation I became so proficient that I could work lunars with ease, and after the passage home of 110 days without seeing land I placed the position of the ship within three miles of her true position, near the Wolf Rock, Land's End, the old captain being ten to twelve miles out in his longitude. I remember feeling very proud of my good landfall. I told the old skipper that I thought we should see land at noon. He smiled and replied that we should not make it before three o'clock. I went aloft on to the fore yard-arm at one o'clock, and had not been there many minutes when I shouted "Land Ho!" I saw the sea breaking over the Wolf Rock.