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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Dream Ship . . . . . . Frontispiece
The Reciprocal Morning Douche, Mid-Ocean
Steve at the Sextant and Peter at the Helm
The Dream Ship Passes from Atlantic to Pacific
At St. Lucia, West Indies
Launching Outrigger Canoe in the Marquesas
Pascal, the Pearl-Diving Non-starter
A Man of the Atolls
Off Nukuhiva, Marquesas Islands
Pearl-Diver About to Descend
Pearl-Divers in a Paumotan Lagoon
Mr. Mumpus's Blisters
Fish-Spearing on the Reef
Moorea, the Land of the Lizard Men
Moorea Greets the Dream Ship
The Leaning Palms
Landing on Palmerston Island
The National Sport at Palmerston Island
Dragging a Boat Through the Reef Pass
The Taro Patch
Mr. Masters Himself
The Dream Ship Bargain Sale
Thursday Island Pearling Luggers
In the Old Days of the "Floating Station" Schooner
High Holiday on a "T.I." Beach
Festival Headdress of Torres Straits Islanders
The Japanese Club
Out of the Deep
The Main Products of Torres Straits
An Islander's Home on T.I.
The Tennis Handicap
Lines of the Dream Ship, Designed by Colin Archer and Built at Porsgrund, Norway, in 1908
Sail and Rigging Plan of the Dream Ship
THE CRUISE OF THE DREAM SHIP
On dreams, and the means to realize them
Chapter I headpiece
CHAPTER I
On dreams, and the means to realize them
We all have our dreams. Without them we should be clods. It is in our dreams that we accomplish the impossible; the rich man dumps his load of responsibility and lives in a log shack on a mountain top, the poor man becomes rich, the stay-at-home travels, the wanderer finds an abiding place.
For more years than I like to recall my dream has been to cruise through the South Sea Islands in my own ship, and if you had ever been to the South Sea Islands, it would be yours also. They are the sole remaining spot on this earth that is not infested with big-game-shooting expeditions, globe-trotters, or profiteers, where the inhabitants know how to live, and where the unfortunate from distant and turbulent lands can still find interest, enjoyment, and peace.
My dream was as impracticable as most. There was a war to be attended to and lived through if Providence so willed. There was a ship to be bought, fitted out, and provisioned on a bank balance that would fill the modern cat's-meat-man with contempt. There were the little matters of cramming into a chronically unmathematical head sufficient knowledge of navigation to steer such a ship across the world when she was bought, and of finding a crew that would work her without hope of monetary reward.
The thing looked and sounded sufficiently like comic opera to deter me from mentioning it to any but a select few, and they laughed. Yet such is the driving power of a dream if its fulfilment is sufficiently desired that I write in retrospect with my vision a secure and accomplished fact.
Exactly how it all came about I find it difficult to recall. I have vague recollections of crouching in dug-outs in France, and while others had recourse during their leisure to letter-cases replete with photographs of fluffy girls, I pored with equal interest over plans and designs of my dream ship.
In hospital it was the same, and when a medical board politely ushered me into the street a free man, it took me rather less than four hours to reach the nearest seaport and commence a search that covered the best part of six months.
It is no easy matter to find the counterpart of a dream ship, but in the end I found her patiently awaiting me in a backwater of glorious Devon:—a Norwegian-built auxiliary cutter of twenty-three tons register, designed as a lifeboat for the North Sea fishing fleet, forty-seven feet over all, fifteen feet beam, eight feet draught, built to stand up to anything, and be handled by a crew of three or less. Such was my dream ship in cold print. In reality, and seen through her owner's eyes, she was, naturally, the most wonderful thing that ever happened. A mother on the subject of her child is almost derogatory compared with an owner concerning his ship, so the reader shall be spared further details.
Having found her, there was the little matter of paying for her. I had no money. I have never had any money, but that is a detail that should never be allowed to stand in the way of a really desirable dream. It was necessary to make some. How? By conducting a stubborn offensive on the Army Authorities for my war gratuity. By sitting up to all hours in a moth-eaten dressing-gown and a microscopic flat writing short stories. By assiduously cultivating maiden aunts. By coercion. By—— But I refuse to say more.
The dream ship became mine, but what of a crew? Well, I have a sister, and a sister is an uncommonly handy thing to have, provided she is of the right variety. Mine happens to be, for she agreed to forego all the delicacies of the season and float with me on a piece of wood to the South Sea Islands. So also did a recently demobilized officer who, on hearing that these same islands were not less than three thousand miles from the nearest early-morning parade, offered his services with almost unbecoming alacrity.
With ship and crew accounted for, those unacquainted with the intricacies of ocean cruising may imagine there was nothing more to be done than to sail. Others, who have perhaps trodden the thorny path leading to the fulfilment of a dream such as ours, will realize that our troubles had little more than begun. The hull of a ship—even a dream ship—is a thing vastly different from a vessel fully equipped for a voyage. The difference between a house "furnished" and "unfurnished" is nothing to it. We needed an auxiliary motor engine for entering and leaving port if we would escape extortionate towage charges. We needed copper sheathing to protect our future home against the dreaded cobra worm of tropical waters that has been known to reduce sound wood to the semblance of a honeycomb within six months. We needed water tanks to contain three hundred gallons, oil tanks to hold two hundred, nautical instruments and gear of every possible description, not to mention provisions for an indefinite period.
Exactly how we were to acquire these things without the proverbial penny to do it with was a problem that gave us pause until at an extraordinary, general meeting of the firm of Peter, Steve, and Myself, dream merchants, it was proposed, seconded, and carried unanimously that we suffered from lack of capital, and that, in the words of the chairman, we should have to scatter and scratch for it.
So, each to his method!
Peter became what is called in the advertisements "useful maid" to an exacting invalid of religious and parsimonious tendencies at a South Coast resort. Steve faded into the smoke of a great city on a mission the details of which he has never divulged to this day, though judging by its success I am divided in my surmise as to its nature between "bridge" and robbery with violence.
As for me, I saw nothing for it but a return to the moth-eaten dressing-gown—until I happened to visit the local fish market and asked the price of sole. The answer caused me furiously to think. There were a hundred and fifty sailing vessels in this old-fashioned Devonshire fishing fleet, each earning a handsome income, and not one of them a better craft than mine. Why not go trawling with the dream ship?
This I did, and propose to give a brief account of my experiences for the benefit of those desirous of knowing one way of making a ship pay for herself.
From frequent recourse to the bar-parlour of "The Hole in the Wall," a far-famed hostelry replete with smoke-grimed rafters and sawdust floor, I learnt that the universal custom amongst fishing craft thereabouts was to have a crew of three: two "hands" and a skipper. The money that the catch of fish realized on sale by auction was divided at the week end into five, a share each for the crew, and the remainder going "to the ship" or, in other words, to the owner, who is responsible for all gear.
The Route of the Dream Ship
As regards nets: there are two kinds of trawl net, the "beam" and the otter. Imagine a huge, meshed jelly-bag being towed along the bottom of the sea, and you have the net. But how is the mouth of it, which is often twenty feet long, kept open? In the case of the beam trawl, by a wooden spar terminating each end in iron "heads"; and this is the usual type of net for the sailing smacks comprising the main fleet. But for smaller craft, such as motor boats, a beam trawl is too heavy and unwieldy; consequently the otter trawl was invented.
Ready for Sea
This consists of two boards about three feet by four, weighted at the bottom, and attached to each corner of the mouth of the net. They are "slung" at such an angle that the force of the water as the boat tows them along the bottom of the sea forces them outward, like kites, and thus keeps the mouth of the net stretched. In addition to this, the top of the net's mouth is kept up by cork, and the bottom down, by leads disposed along the foot-rope. It is a simple contrivance, like most things ingenious.
Ninety fathoms of warp, and two wire "bridles," one leading to each board, and thirty fathoms in length, complete the fishing gear, which is paid out and hauled in by means of a hand capstan.
All these articles I somehow acquired, including a "hand" of forbidding aspect, and a boy. The dream ship was converted into a smack with as much expediency as an elderly shipwright with a taste for beer, and his accomplice, a lad of fifteen, allowed; and finally she stood, a thing of such beauty in smacks that I wrote a sonnet to her, which shows the appalling effects of freedom, sea air, and a fish diet.
My opinion of her, however, was not shared by the fishing fraternity. Almost everything that could be wrong with a smack was the matter with the dream ship according to these chronically pessimistic gentry. She had too much freeboard. She had too much beam for her length. Her bulwarks were not high enough. She would never "tow" (trawl).
Yet upon a never-to-be-forgotten morning we sailed—dearly beloved word of infinite possibilities!—we sailed at a seven-knot clip for precisely ten miles. We could beat the ketch-rigged smacks of the fleet to wind'ard without topsail or staysail. I grinned, the boy grinned, even the "hand" grinned as he looked aloft; and it was at that precise moment that I saw his grin fade into an open-mouthed, wide-eyed stare.
"She's gone at the eyes of the rigging," was all he said, with complete composure, and in rich Devonian.
We put about. The mast-head was leaning at an angle of forty degrees, and wabbling on its splintered base like a drunken man. The "hand," in white chin whiskers, enormous boots, and a bowler hat dented on one side, continued to grin. In that hour I hated the man. To him it was a gigantic joke, an amusing problem as to whether we could reach harbour before the mast fell about our ears. To me, the owner of a dream ship, it was tragedy. There are moments when even a sense of humour can be out of place.
One hundred yards from our moorings the mast "went" at the deck as well as the hounds, and fell with a crash the full length of the ship—without touching a soul. It was little short of a miracle, and for a few moments we stood in our several places pondering it.
The mast had scarce met the deck, with the sails and rigging hanging over the side in a tangled mass, when a smack's crew was alongside. Did we want help? We did, but hardly expected such a stiff bill for salvage as was rendered the next day.
It took three weeks to step the dream ship's new mast; three miserable weeks of waiting that only those who have "fitted out" can appreciate. But in time we sailed afresh. We even launched the trawl with much shouting and flurry, and at the end of two hours' speculation hauled it up again by sheer brawn and the capstan, got the net aboard, and found mud, nothing but mud, in the cod-end.
Various explanations were forthcoming from the "hand" for this calamity. There was too much lead on the foot-rope. There was too much cork on the head-line. The otter boards were not slung true. We had been towing too fast. We had been towing too slow. Why, bless your heart, there were men (successful fishermen now) who had spent months in adjusting an otter trawl. An inch this way or that made all the difference. An otter trawl was like a watch. Out of all this the hard fact emerged that we had caught no fish.
Fisherman
For two weeks we were out early and late experimenting, and for two weeks I scraped together (Heaven knows how!) sufficient for the "hand's" retainer and my own board and lodging. And then—success came to us as by a miracle. Instead of mud, or shells, or weed, we found fish in the cod-end: fat plaice, luxurious sole, skate, and whiting.
What we had done to our otter trawl I don't think anyone knew, least of all the "hand," and I am none the wiser to this day, but it caught fish. We treasured that trawl as something exceedingly precious, and nothing, nothing whatsoever, would cause us to alter its ropes or leads a hair's breadth. We lived in constant dread that we should meet a "hitch" (an obstacle on the bottom of the sea) that would make it necessary to cut the warp and lose this wonderful trawl. It would have taken two weeks, perhaps two months, to discover another like it, and we were averaging fifty pounds a week.
Success breeds ambition, and I installed a motor auxiliary engine. Further, there is only one way of catching more fish than by trawling all day, and that is trawling all night. The fish, especially whiting, do not see the net coming in the dark. So we acquired the habits of night-hawks, sailing at four o'clock in the afternoon, and returning at six the next morning. It paid. It paid handsomely. What should I not be able to report at the next general meeting of dream merchants?
It was a fine sight on a pitch-black night to see our wake streaming away like smoke from the propeller, so bright with phosphorescence that it seemed a powerful light must be hung over the stern. And to watch the net, lit with a myriad tiny lamps, creeping in yard by yard. Then, what a splashing as the big skate and plaice came alongside!
It must be remembered that the dream ship's career as a fishing smack was during the last phases of the great war. She saw three German submarines, two steamers sunk, and had her stalwart ribs severely shaken by depth-charges on several occasions. In fact, as one concussion caused her to leak, I had serious thoughts of decorating her with a wound-stripe on the starboard quarter. What the effect of one of those fearful implements of destruction must be at close quarters, and while submerged, I can hardly imagine. I only know that one was dropped about half a mile from the dream ship, and from the cabin it sounded as though someone had hit the oil-tanks with a sledge-hammer, and felt as though she had run bow on, and at a nine-knot clip, into an iceberg.
Over twenty good, sound fishing smacks belonging to the fleet with which we sailed were sent to the bottom by German submarines. In one case the crew were stripped of their jerseys—the only article aboard the smack that seemed to appeal to the Hun—and left on deck while the submarine submerged under their feet. The one survivor's chief complaint appeared to be the loss of his jersey.
On more than one occasion a German submarine appeared in the midst of the fishing fleet, which they favoured as an unsuspected lurking-place. Warps were cut on the instant, and, under full sail, a hundred smacks might have been seen racing harbourward minus their gear. This became such a common occurrence that patrol boats were sent out with the fleet, and "forbidden areas" created.
These last were unpopular with fishermen. The authorities seemed to pitch inevitably on the most prolific grounds to place under the ban. Poaching became general. In one instance the skipper of a smack, who had had a bad "week's work," decided to make amends or perish in the effort. He altered the registered number of his boat, which is carried in large white figures on the mainsail and bow, with whitewash, burnt-corked the faces of himself and his crew, and sailed for the banned area.
For hours he trawled backward and forward across the holy ground, with dread and hope alternating in his heart, and with the first hint of dawn hauled in his net, to discover that in the general excitement he had "shot" his trawl with the cod-end untied!
Nothing daunted, he returned to the attack the following night, and as Fate the Jester so often decrees, on this occasion, when the cod-end was securely tied and all going well, the hated voice of the fisheries inspector, better known as the "bogey-man," came out of the night, close alongside: "You are reported for trawling in the proscribed area."
Simultaneously a shaft of light from an electric torch bit into the darkness, exposing the smack's number and her black-faced crew.
"Stand by. I'm coming aboard," were the next instructions, but the men were suddenly electrified into life. In stony silence, so that their voices should not be recognized, the skipper successfully threatened the boarding "bogey-man" with a cutlass, while the crew set the steam capstan to work and soon had the trawl aboard with its valuable freight.
With the "bogey-man" still threatening dire vengeance, the smack stood out to sea, and catching the morning breeze, outstripped the inspector's launch. The authorities never knew who perpetrated this outrage, as, when they came to look up the smack's number in the register, they found it to be that of an antiquated hulk that had never left harbour.
It is to be feared that the dream ship poached. On one occasion a thick fog descended upon her while trawling. She continued the motion blindly for three hours, when the fog lifted and we discovered—naturally with deep regrets—that we had covered a forbidden area from end to end, and had caught sole, plaice, and turbot to the value of forty pounds.
The dream ship had many experiences while "paying for herself," and was destined to have many more. For her size, it is doubtful if any craft has enjoyed a more varied life, and the more I think of her lying there in foreign waters, ... But of this anon.
THE PREPARATION
Concerning preparations in general, and personnel in particular
