Читать книгу Forty Years for Labrador - Wilfred T. Grenfell - Страница 10

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Among the patients who came to the London Hospital, there were now and again fishermen from the large fishing fleets of the North Sea. They lived out, as it were, in floating villages, sending their fish to market every day by fast cutters. Every two or three months, as their turn came round, a vessel would leave for the home port on the east coast, being permitted, or supposed to be permitted, a day at home for each full week at sea. As the fleets kept the sea summer and winter, and the boats were small, not averaging over sixty tons, it was a hazardous calling. The North Sea is nowhere deeper than thirty fathoms, much of it being under twenty, and in some places only five. Indeed, it is a recently sunken and still sinking portion of Europe, so much so that the coasts on both sides are constantly receding, and when Heligoland was handed over by the English to the Kaiser, it was said that he would have to keep jacking it up, or soon there would be none left. Shallow waters exposed to the fierce gales which sweep the German Ocean make deep and dangerous seas, which readily break and wash the decks of craft with low freeboard, such as the North Sea vessels are obliged to have, in order to get boats in and out to ferry their fish to the cutter.

There being no skilled aid at hand, the quickest way to get help in cases of accident used to be to send an injured man to market with the fish. Often it was a long journey of many days, simple fractures became compound, and limbs and faculties were often thus lost. It so happened that Sir Frederick Treves had a love for navigating in small sailing-craft, and had recently made a trip among the fishing fleets. He told me that a small body of men, interested in the religious and social welfare of the deep-sea fishermen, had chartered a small fishing-smack, and sent her out among the fishermen to hold religious services of a simple, unconventional type, in order to afford the men an alternative to the grog vessels when fishing was slack, and to carry first aid, the skipper of the vessel being taught ambulance work. They wanted, however, to get a young doctor to go out, who cared also for the spiritual side of the work. His advice to me was to go and have a look at it. 'If you go in January, you will see some fine seascapes, anyhow. Don't try it in summer when all the old ladies go there for a rest.'

I therefore applied to go out the following January; and that fall, while working near the Great London docks, I used often to look at the tall East Indiamen, thinking that I soon should be aboard just such a vessel in the North Sea. It was dark and raining when my train ran into Yarmouth, and a dripping, stout fisherman in a blue uniform met me at that then unattractive and ill-lighted terminus. He had brought a forlorn 'growler' or four-wheel cab. Climbing in we drove a mile or more along a deserted road, and drew up at last apparently at the back of beyond.

'Where is the ship?' I asked.

'Why, those are her topmasts,' replied my guide, pointing to two posts projecting from the sand. 'The tide is low and she is hidden by the quay.'

'Heavens!' I thought; 'she's no tea clipper, anyhow.'

I climbed up the bank and peered down in the darkness at the hull of a small craft, a little larger than our old Roysterer. She was just discernible by the dim rays of the anchor light. I was hesitating as to whether I should not drive back to Yarmouth and return to London, when a cheery voice on deck called out a hearty welcome. It broke the spell and I had my cabby unload my bags on the bank. As his wheels rumbled away into the rain and dark, I felt that my cables were cut. Too late to save me, the cheery voice shouted, 'Mind the rigging, it's just tarred and greased.' I was already sliding down in jerks, caused by my sticking to it as I went. Small as the vessel was, she was absolutely spotless. Her steward, who cooked for all hands, was smart and in a snow-white suit. The contrast of between-decks and that above was very comforting, though my quarters were small. The crew were all stocky, good-humoured, and independent. Democratic as East London had made me, they impressed me very favourably, and I began to look forward to the venture with real pleasure.

Drink was the worst enemy of these men. The quay-sides of the fishermen's quarters teemed with low saloons. Wages were even paid off in them or their annexes, and grog vessels, luring men aboard with cheap tobacco and low literature, plied their nefarious calling among the fleets. They were the death, body and soul, of many of these fine specimens of manhood. Many is the time I have pitied those who manufacture and sell alcoholic drink to make a few sordid dollars.

Thirty years ago we were more conventional than to-day, and I was much surprised to learn from our skipper that we were bound first to Ostend to ship four tons of tobacco, sent over from England for us in bond, since he might not take it out consigned to the high seas. In Belgium, however, no duty was paid. The only trouble was that our vessel, to help pay its expenses, carried fishing gear, and as a fishing vessel could not get a clearance for trading even in Belgium. Our nets and beams, therefore, had to go out to the fishing grounds in a friendly trawler, while we passed as belonging to the mercantile marine during the time we took on our cargo.

So bitter was the cold that in Ostend we got frozen in and were able to skate up the harbour. We had eventually to get a steamer to go around us and smash our ice bonds, when we were again ready for sea. During the next two months we saw no land except Heligoland and Terschelling—or Skilling, as the fishermen called it—far away in the offing. Nor was our deck once clear of ice and snow during the whole time.

Our duty was to visit as many fleets as we could, and arrange with some reliable vessel to take a stock of tobacco for the use of their special fleet. The ship was to carry about six feet of blue bunting on her foretopmast stay, a couple of fathoms above her bowsprit end, so that all the fleet might know her. She was to sell the tobacco at a fixed price that just covered the cost, and undersold the 'coper' or grog vessel by fifty per cent. She was to hoist her flag for business every morning, while the small boats were out boarding fish on the carrier, and was to lie as far to leeward of the coper as possible so that the men could not go to both. Nineteen such floating depots were eventually arranged for, with the precaution that if any one of them had to return to port, he should bring no tobacco home, but hand over his stock and accounts to a reliable friend.

These deep-sea fisheries were a revelation to me. It was amazing to find over twenty thousand men and boys afloat—the merriest, cheerfullest lot which I had ever met. They were hail-fellow-well-met with everyone, and never thought of deprivation or danger. Clothing, food, conventions were all subordinated to utility. In efficiency and for their daring resourcefulness in physical difficulties and dangers, they were absolutely in a class by themselves, embodying all the traits of character which make men love to read the stories of the buccaneers and other seamen of the sixteenth century.

Each fleet had its admiral and vice-admiral, appointed partly by the owner and partly by the skippers of the vessels. The admiral directed operations by flags in the daytime and by rockets at night, thus indicating what the fleet was to do and where they were to fish. Generally he had the fastest boat, and the cutters hunting for the fleet always lay just astern of the admiral, the morning after their arrival. Hundreds of men would come for letters, packages, to load fish, or to get the news of what their last consignment fetched in the market. Moreover, a kind of Parliament was held aboard the cutter every morning, to consider policies and hear complaints.

At first it was a great surprise to me how these men knew where they were, for we never saw anything but sky and sea, and not even the admirals carried a chronometer or could work out a longitude; while only a small percentage of the skippers could read or write. They all, however, carried a sextant and could by rule of thumb find a latitude roughly. But that was only done at a pinch. The armed lead was the fisherman's friend. It was a heavy lead with a cup on the bottom filled fresh each time with sticky grease. When used, the depth was always called out by the watch, and the kind of sand, mud, or rock which stuck to the grease shown to the skipper. 'Fifteen fathoms and coffee grounds—must be on the tail end of the Dogger. Put her a bit more to the westward, boy,' he would remark, and think no more about it, though he might have been three or four days looking for his fleet and not spoken to a soul since he left land. I remember one skipper used to have the lead brought down below, and he could tell by the grit between his teeth after a couple of soundings which way to steer. It sounds strange even now, but it was so universal, being just second-nature to the men who from boyhood had lived on the sea, that we soon ceased to marvel at it. Skippers were only just being obliged to have certificates. These were obtained by viva voce examinations. You would sometimes hear an aspiring student, a great black-bearded pirate over forty-seven inches around the chest, and possibly the father of eight or ten children, as he stamped about in his watch keeping warm, repeating the courses—'East end of the Dogger to the Horn. S.E. by E. ½ E. and W. point of the island [Heligoland], to Borkum, S.S.E.'

Whatever they did, they did hard. One of the admirals, being a thirsty soul, and the grog vessels having been adrift for a longer while than he fancied, conceived the fine idea of holding up the Heligoland saloons. So one bright morning he hove his fleet to under the lee of the island and a number of boats went ashore, presumably to sell fish. Altogether they landed some five hundred men, who held up the few saloons for two or three days. As a result subsequently only one crew selling fish to the island was allowed ashore at a time. The very gamble of their occupation made them do things hard. It was a dangerous task to throw out a small boat in half a gale of wind, fill her up with heavy boxes of fish, and send her to put these over the rail of a steamer wallowing in the trough of a mountainous sea.

It was on these very days, when less fish was sent to market, that the best prices were realized, and so there were always a number of dare-devils, who did not care if lives were lost so long as good prices were obtained, and their own record stood high on the weekly list of sales, which was forwarded to both owners and men. I have known as many as fourteen men upset in one morning out of these boats; and the annual loss of some three hundred and fifty men was mostly from this cause. Conditions were subsequently improved by the Board of Trade, who made it manslaughter against the skipper if any man was drowned boarding fish, unless the admiral had shown his flags to give the fleet permission to do so. In those days, however, I often saw twenty to thirty boats tied up alongside the cutter at one time, the heavy seas every now and again rolling the cutter's rail right under water, which, when she righted again, might come up under the keels of some of the boats and tip them upside-down. Thus, anyone in them was caught like a mouse under a trap or knocked to pieces trying to swim among the rushing, tossing boats.

As a rule, we hauled the net at midnight. This was always a fresh source of wonder, for the trawl was catholic in its embrace, and brought up anything that came in its way. To emphasize how comparatively recently the Channel had been dry land, many teeth and tusks of mammals who used to roam its now buried forests were given up to the nets by the ever-shifting sands. Old wreckage of every description, ancient crockery, and even a water-logged old square-rigger that must have sunk years before were brought one day as far as the surface by the stout wire warp. After the loss of a large steamer called the Elbe, many of the passengers who had been drowned were hauled up in this way; and on one occasion great excitement was caused in Hull by a fisher lad from that port being picked up with his hands tied behind his back and a heavy weight on his feet. The defence was that the boy had died and was thus buried to save breaking the voyage—supported by the fact that another vessel had also picked up the boy and thrown him overboard again for the same reason. But some thought otherwise, and more especially as cruelty to these boys was not unknown.

These lads were apprenticed to the fishery masters largely from industrial or reformatory schools. They had no relations to look after them, and often no doubt gave the limit of trouble and irritation. On the whole, however, the system worked well, and a most excellent class of capable seamen was developed. At times, however, they were badly exploited. During their apprenticeship years they were not entitled to pay, only to pocket money, and yet sometimes the whole crew including the skipper were apprentice and under twenty-one years of age. After that they were fitted for no other calling but to follow the sea, and had to accept the master's terms. There were no fishermen's unions, and the men, being very largely illiterate, were often left victims of a peonage system in spite of the Truck Acts. The master of a vessel has to keep discipline, especially in a fleet, and the best of boys have faults and need punishing while on land. These skippers themselves were brought up in a rough school; and those who fell victims to drink and made the acquaintance of the remedial measure of our penal system of that day were only further brutalized by it. Religion scarcely touched the majority, for their brief periods of leave ashore were not unnaturally spent in having a good time. To those poisoned by the villainous beverages sold on the sordid grog vessels, no excess was too great. Owners were in sympathy with the Mission in trying to oust the coper, because their property, in the form of fish, nets, stores, and even sails, was sometimes bartered on the high seas for liquor. On one occasion during a drunken quarrel in the coper's cabin one skipper threw the kerosene lamp over another lying intoxicated on the floor. His heavy wool jersey, soaked in kerosene, caught fire. He rushed for the deck, and then, a dancing mass of flames, leaped overboard and disappeared.

LABRADOR IN SUMMER

Occasionally skippers devised punishments with a view to remedying the defects of character. Thus, one lad, who through carelessness had on more than one occasion cooked the 'duff' for dinner badly, was made to take his cinders on deck when it was his time to turn in, and go forward to the fore-rigging, when he had to take one cinder, go up to the cross-tree, and throw it over into the sea, come down the opposite rigging and repeat the act until he had emptied his scuttle. Another who had failed to clean the cabin properly had one night, instead of going to bed, to take a bucketful of sea water and empty it with a teaspoon into another, and so to and fro until morning. On one occasion a poor boy was put under the ballast deck—that is, the cabin floor—and forgotten. He was subsequently found dead, drowned in the bilge-water. It was easy to hide the results of cruelty, for being washed overboard was by no means an uncommon way of disappearing from vessels with low freeboards in the shallow waters of the North Sea.

There is so much that is manly about the lives of those who follow the sea, so much less artificiality than in many other callings, and with our fishermen so many fewer of what we call, loosely, 'chances in life,' that to sympathize with them was easy—and sympathy is a long step toward love. Life at sea breaks down conventional barriers, and almost compels fellowship and an intelligent understanding of the difficulties and tragedies of the soul of one's neighbour. That rare faculty of imagination, which is the inspiration of all great lovers of men, was unnecessary here. The conviction that these men needed what I had to give, and that it would not be given if I refused the challenge, was as plain as daylight.

In other words, the field of work offered what I still consider as the most remunerative returns for any man's abilities; or, to put it in another way, it made me believe that my special capacities and training could be used to make new men as well as new bodies. Any idea of sacrifice was balanced by the fact that I never cared much for the frills of life so long as the necessities were forthcoming. Science taught me that 'little' and 'big' are relative terms only. The greatest Life ever lived was no smaller for being staged in a village carpenter's shop among fishermen.

Another movement was just starting at that time which interested me considerably. It was an organization called the Public School Camps. An integral part of my summer holidays during these years was spent as medical officer at one of these camps. For many reasons in England it was wise to run them on military lines, for, besides the added dignity, it ensured the ability to maintain order and discipline. Some well-known commandant was chosen who was a soldier also in the good fight of faith. Special sites were selected, generally on the grounds of some big country seat, which were lent by the interested lord of the manor, and every kind of outdoor attraction was provided which could be secured. Besides organized competitive games, there was usually a yacht, good bathing, always a gymkhana, and numerous expeditions and hikes. All of the work of the camp was done by the boys, who each served in turn on orderly duty. The officers were always, if possible, prominent athletes, to whom the boys could look up as being capable in physical as well as in spiritual fields. There was a brief address each night before taps in the big marquee used for mess; and one night there was always a straight talk on the problems of sex by one of the medical officers, whom the boys were advised to consult on their perplexities. These camps are among my happiest memories. Many men to-day gratefully acknowledge that these camps were the turning-point of their whole lives. The secret was unconventionality and absolute naturalness, with no shibboleths. The boys were encouraged to be boys in an atmosphere of sincere, if not omniscient fervour. On one occasion, when breaking up camp, a curly-headed young rascal in my tent, being late on the last morning—unknown to anyone—went to the train in his pyjamas, hidden only by his raincoat. At a small wayside station over a hundred miles from London, whither he was bound, leaving his coat in the carriage, he ventured into the refreshment stall of the waiting-room. Unfortunately, however, he came out only to find his train departed and himself in his night-clothes on the platform without a penny, a ticket, or a friend. Eluding the authorities, he reached the huge Liverpool Street terminus at night to find a faithful friend waiting on the platform for him with a sorely needed overgarment.

Our North Sea work grew apace. Vessel after vessel was added to the fleet. Her Majesty Queen Victoria became interested, and, besides subscribing personally toward the first hospital boat, permitted it to be named in her honour. According to custom, the builders had a beautiful little model made which Her Majesty agreed to accept. It was decided that it should be presented to her in Buckingham Palace by the two senior Mission captains.

The journey to them was a far more serious undertaking than a winter voyage on the Dogger Bank. However, arrayed in smart blue suits and new guernseys and polished to the last degree, they set out on the eventful expedition. On their return, everyone was as anxious to know 'how the voyage had turned out' as if they had been exploring new fishing grounds around the North Cape or in the White Sea. 'Nothing to complain of, boys, till just as we had her in the wind's eye to shoot the gear,' said the senior skipper. 'A big swell in knee-breeches opened the door and called out our names, when I was brought up all standing, for I saw that the peak halyard was fast on the port side. The blame thing was too small for me to shift her, so I had to leave it. But, believe me, she never said a word about it. That's what I call a lady.'

Our work had now extended to the herring fleets of Manxmen, Irishmen, Scotch, and English off West Ireland. One day we had landed on the Aran Islands, and I was hunting ferns in the rock crevices, for owing to the warmth of the Gulf Current the growth is luxuriant. On the top of the cliffs about three hundred feet high, I fell in with two Irishmen smoking their pipes and sprawling on the edge of the precipice. The water below was very deep and they were fishing. I had the fun of seeing dangling codfish hauled leisurely up all that long distance. If one fell off on the journey up, it was amusing to note the absolute insouciance of the fishermen, who assured me that there were plenty more in the sea.

On these wild coasts, calls for help frequently came from the poor settlers as well as from the seafarers. A summons coming in one day from the Fastnet Light, we rowed out in a small boat to that lonely rock in the Atlantic. A heavy sea, however, making landing impossible, we caught hold of a buoy, anchored off from the rock, and then, rowing in almost to the surf, caught a line from the high overhanging crane. A few moments later one was picked out of the tumbling, tossing boat like a winkle from a shell, by a noose at the end of a line from a crane a hundred and fifty feet above, was swung perpendicularly up into the air, and then round and into a trapdoor in the side of the lighthouse. On leaving, one was swung out again in the same fashion, and dangled over the tumbling boat until caught and pulled in by the oarsmen.

Another day we rowed out nine miles in an Irish craft to visit the Skerry Islands, famous for the old Beehive Monastery and the countless nests of gannets and other large sea-birds. The cliffs rise to a great height precipitously, and the ceaseless thunder of the Atlantic swell jealously guards any landing. There being no davit or crane, we just had to fling ourselves into the sea and climb up as best we could, carrying a line to haul up our clothing from the boat and other apparatus after landing, while the oarsmen kept her outside the surf. To hold on to the slippery rock we needed but little clothing, anyhow, for the clinging power of one's bare toes was essential. The innumerable gannets sitting on their nests gave the island the appearance of a snowdrift; and we soon had all the eggs that we needed lowered by a line. But some of the gulls, of whose eggs we wanted specimens also, built so cleverly on to the actual faces of the cliffs, that we had to adopt the old plan of hanging over the edge and raising the eggs on the back of one's foot, which is an exploit not devoid of excitement. The chief difficulty was, however, with one of our number, who literally stuck on the top, being unable to descend, at least in a way compatible with comfort or safety. The upshot was that he had to be blindfolded and then helped down.

Among the many memories of the Irish coast which gave me a vision of the land question as it affected the people in those days, one in particular has always remained with me. We had made a big catch in a certain bay, a perfectly beautiful inlet. To see if the local fishermen could find a market within reach of these fishing grounds, with one of the crew, and the fish packed in boxes, I sailed up the inlet to the market-town of Belmullet. Being Saturday, we found a market in progress, and buyers who, encouraged by one of the new Government light railways, were able to purchase our fish. That evening, however, when half-way home, a squall suddenly struck our own lightened boat and capsized her. By swimming and manœuvring the boat, we made land on some low, muddy flats. No house was in sight, and it was not until long after dark that we two shivering masses of wet mud reached an isolated cabin in the middle of a patch of redeemed ground right in the centre of a large bog. A miserably clad woman greeted us with a warm Irish welcome. The house had only one room, which accommodated the livestock as well as the family. A fine cow stood in one corner; while a donkey tied to the foot of the bed was patiently looking down into the face of the baby. The father was in England harvesting. A couple of pigs lay under the bed, and the floor space was still further encroached upon by a goodly number of chickens, which, encouraged by the warmth of the peat fire, not only thought it their duty to accord us a welcome, but—misled by the firelight—kept saluting the still far-off dawn. The resultant emotions led us on departing to suggest that out of gratitude we would like to assist with the erection of a cattle-pen. Our overtures were, however, rejected on the ground that 'Shure t'rint would be raised in the fall' if any such signs of prosperity as farm buildings greeted the land agent's arrival.

The voyage closed amongst the enormous fleet of Scotch herringers fishing off the Island of Lewis. Millions of herrings are taken. I have seen a mile of nets at a time sunk by the fish, while enough nets were set each night to reach to America and back again. The oil from the fish made the water so glassy that you could sail with a strong breeze and not see a ripple on the surface. The Society as a result established a summer Mission station at Stornoway for these men. A more pious set of men I never met, especially in their rigid keeping of Sunday. We learned to have the profoundest respect and affection for these men.

The introduction of the Mission ship on the seas banished utterly the grog ship. International prohibition of the sale of alcoholic liquors to fishermen on the high seas was obtained, and, the rich being as interested as the poor in maintaining it, it has proved an enormous blessing. But it was not a mere negative law that achieved the end with the great blessings that accompanied it. The grog ship was replaced by the Mission, hardship by friendship and worship. The secret was that a new fleet was built up.