… One thing for certain. No woman I care for will go as a passenger on a ship. Unless she goes with the whole Spanish flota.
… One time I saw a fellow take a fat black-haired Spanish dame—she was a lady and might have earned us good profit by ransom—and had her to kneel and take it behind like a dog. Then he called her a bitch in heat and turned her upside down, all wiggling like a tunny fish and crying like a wounded weasel. And he lugged her over to a wine cask and drowned her in it upside down. And then, when she was drowned and limp, with her feet still standing up in the cask, he takes his cup and dips it full and says every man will damn well drink with him. If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for the whole scurvy lot. And by God, we drank that wine.
… Our captain, not the best I’ve known, but a good man, is walking the poop of our ship with the master, pretending to study clouds and waves for signs of weather.
… Next morning that same brute fellow stands up with the rest of us, bows his head and mumbles prayers as we heave our own dead, all wrapped in canvas, over the side.
… No doubt you’d like to hear how he fell into the hands of the Spaniards and is now pulling an oar with scars on his back. Or maybe, to make his justice perfect, was taken by Moors and transformed to a eunuch.
… But the fellow did well enough and saved his money. He owns a tavern near Dartmouth where mariners go. He married a widow, most religious herself, and they are great ones for listening to sermons.
… He’s a good and cheerful man. Always greets me warm and serves up a pint of ale for sake of friendship.
… I doubt he remembers it at all. In truth, I had let slip of it myself until now. For—and any seaman will be my witness—there is so much labor and danger to sailing that a man forgets from one day to the next. What he remembers will come back long after.
… Once in a bad wind we lay too close to shore and waves off Virginia. And we like to have lost the ship. And all I recalled afterwards was coldsweat fear and working in a fever of hauling and furling according to the wretched wind, until my hands were bleeding. But long after in a tavern, feeling good, not drunk but glad at heart and far from my troubles, it all came back to me. None of the other, but a strangeness I had not even noticed then. How when the wind would turn around and spring off the land, the scent of it was sweeter than an English garden in springtime. Like the scent of flowers had been laden into the land breeze. So sweet that fume, it could put you to sleep. And all the while a leaky rotten ship, crammed with shouting men and the pipes and whistles of the officers screaming in the wind and all of us working and throwing our puny cargo overside to lighten her and pumping like wild beasts, was about to break apart into firewood and convert us into food for fish.
… Well, there is no such thing as a safe and sure voyage. A man on water is a child of Fortune. Not safe and sure even in a cock boat on an inland pond. Water and wind will have their way and always have the last word.
… I have made voyages that should have been as quiet as a ride on a hoy down the Thames in midsummer. And have seen such a voyage turn into a nightmare. When bloody flux and pox and itch and fevers and pustules without names have wiped out half the crew and crazed the rest. When rats, as fat and sleek as judges at Westminster, outnumbered living men. And while rats and lice and maggots gorged upon them, the dead were being robbed and stripped by their living mates. Drank bilge water and ate boiled leather until the ship finally gave up her ghost and broke apart. Casting a few upon a rocky shore, where we grubbed and groveled for mussels and crabs until a vessel chanced to sail by and carry us home.
… And just so I have sailed out upon the certainty of nothing but tribulation. To return unscathed, unscarred, unmarked, my purse full of silver and gold, my seabag stuffed with fine things, and myself fatter and stouter by far than when I kissed the whores good-bye.
… Oh, some things are sure. If you sail by command of a green young man from Court, why it’s only roll the dice and your life is wagered upon one roll. Those peacocks, they desire a ship cram-full to hatches with gold and rare spices. And, more than that, they look for a tale of wondrous honor that may be told at Court or printed in a book. Meaning many must die to bring it to pass. And yet there are mariners who have endured such Bedlamite voyages and who are now masters and even owners of ships.
… If you sail for the merchants, the risks of the sea are all the same, but you’ll be confined to the carrying out and bringing home of bulk cargo. And to defending it. Taking no chances, though you may take a prize if you happen upon an easy one. Yet there are good voyages where these will add up to a decent sum. And even if you are somewhat connied in breaking of bulk and must sell what you have to the customer ashore for a childish part of its value,—as if we seamen knew no more of prices and value than a red Indian!—still, you come to walk on land again with the jingle of money to spend and to keep you happy and in health for a while. Until the time comes when you must either ship out again or starve.
… I’ll not speak of pirates and corsairs. With no home port, no country, it’s a rat’s life. Hand to mouth and never much more than the scars to show for it. Raids by night on villages where the best plate is dented pewter. And if you are lucky you may get a ransom for the life of the sister of some under-sheriff, though most likely she’s too ugly and shrewish to keep aboard, even in chains, for long enough to find out. If you are a lucky pirate, you’ll die in a fight or a tavern brawl. The best odds are you shall hang in chains. A pity it is, too; for we are bound to see many a poor man so trussed up in iron, many and more than you may know.
… For now the sweet good cider is gone for good, has turned to vinegar. The life of a seafaring man nowadays is enough to turn your stomach inside out.…
Here the seaman hawks and spits, cutting his eyes away, looking down to spit a gob, well aimed, just beyond the tips of his shoes. Has lowered his voice to a sort of whisper, though audible enough. Lowered head and eyes, lowered voice to a whisper, and, expressionless, speaks out of the side of his mouth, his lips still half pursed as if to spit again.
And now the right hand has moved slightly. It touches lightly the handle of the knife.
… It’s a bad time for English seafaring in the King’s reign, I tell you. We have what they call peace. Which means that every honest privateer is now a pirate. And means, since all the world is out for prizes, we are the fattest, fairest, easiest game. A nation of fat floating connies.
… Living, if you can call it that even in a jest, by their wages alone, and, mark you, common wages have not changed since the times of the Queen, men will not go to sea as before. It is no wonder that now they must swoop down and press crews as they do soldiers. It makes any honest seaman swallow tears, to see those surly scarecrow men, one half out of the jails and the other from Bedlam, men who know and care nothing of lines and corses, who think a whipstaff is a thing a constable carries and will shit upon poop deck, as much from ignorance as insolence. Who will steal water and victuals and think it a jest when their mates go on short rations. Will laugh at others until a day when all must starve equal. Whereupon they will fall not on their knees and cry mercy and forgiveness of God, but more likely curse Him for their fates.
… Not that it matters who the seamen may be, considering the state our ships are in. Have you seen the ships of the Navy Royal? Rotten tackle and rig, planks and timbers no sea worm with self-respect would condescend to chew on. All rats with half wit have long since departed. A mongrel pup would shy away from the victuals. Ordnance has gone to rust and you could bake bread with the gunpowder. Or else it is deadly as a siege mine. I heard tell not long ago of a gunner who, upon entering Plymouth mole and by custom, let fly a blank salute. Blew up the whole ship, it did, and the sky was raining seamen, some whole, and some in butcher’s portions. Yet they sell the best English ordnance and powder to anyone who can pay the price. Have you heard how the Devil of the Dungheap, that Gondomar, has purchased a huge quantity of powder and new cannon from
the Tower? It was loaded as cargo on the same tub that took him back to Spain. I hear it was such a bargain you might as well call it a gift.
… Someone will be along soon and warn me to curb my tongue. Now, that’s a most difficult thing to ask of a seafaring man when he’s safe on shore and has trapped a live one who’ll listen to him. Talk will be the ruination of me. Let us return to safe harbor and talk of seafaring in the last age.
… You can call a seafaring man a fool. Foolish to risk life and limb for small profit or none. More fool for coming ashore with money in his purse to enrich half the tavern keepers and poxy whores in England. And unless he has more luck and wit than Prester John, a seafaring man will live to be old with more patches in his clothes than a gypsy. An empty purse, tired bones, a tough palm to catch pennies when he can, and a heart as bitter as wormwood. No wife or good woman to care for him in his dotage, and no children bearing his name.
… Call him ignorant and foolish. But call him no fool in matters of life and death. If he fares badly or starves because of a thieving, conniving victualer or an addlebrained captain or a lazy wretch of a cooper, he’ll know it. And he’ll curse them and maybe kill them too. But if it’s bad wind, bad weather, the fortunes of a voyage, then he’ll eat a weevily biscuit like it was manna from heaven. Though he curse the taste of it, he’ll chew it and keep it down.
… Now then, I will waste not many more words. It would take me a lifetime to teach the first things of our ships and sailing. And that would be true even if I knew the right words to teach by. Because, except for an idle word here and there, I would sound as strange as any Turk or a Cimarron if I talked in the language of seamen. We weren’t much for words at sea. On land we laughed and told lies and talked until our throats ached and our tongues were raw, for the pleasure of it. But with, God willing, wind in the tackling and sails as tight and smooth as the belly of a woman far gone with child, and the sigh and shiver of timbers as she pitched and rolled to the dance of the sea, splash of white water at beak and trailing aft, and the lap and slap and swish and slip-slop of water rushing past, cry of lookout, barks of quartermaster to the helm, boatswain’s whistle shrieking, and both hands busy when you had the watch (dead asleep when you didn’t), why, there wasn’t much time for idle chatter.
… No, I’ll tell no tales and I’ll not pretend to teach a craft that took me a lifetime to learn.
… You may have heard from other folks that your English seaman was like a savage and had no discipline worthy to mention. You find, in books, that our rules were strict and punishments severe; but that we didn’t hesitate to mutiny and so forth. Well, there is never an answer to something truly contrary, but there is more to it than meets the eye.
… There are many kinds of discipline. One is in a man’s craft and skill. It took more than obedience to orders to raise anchors, hoist sails, and get under way. If we lacked the skill and if we failed to work together, every man jack, with trust and with true care for each other, then we would never have been able to get a ship out of harbor, let alone across the world and back. And once under way there can be no slacking off of either, not until the last anchor drops for good and our feet are firm on shore and pointed in all the directions of a compass rose. One man failing, through ignorance or stupidity or laziness, at any task, and, by God, every man feels it from the captain to the youngest boy.
… Now, that is the least of it, that everyone aboard can feel with his body what every other man does or does not do. It is more. For a sum of little failures or follies will be a broken ship and death of us all. And the same is true as much of a boat with a half-dozen men at the oars as with a giant carrack and a hundred men aloft working canvas. Think of us chained together, then, like prisoners, though the chains are invisible and we are prisoners by free choice.
… What most people mean by discipline is something else. The obedience of a soldier who goes where he is told and does what he is told to do without asking why. Now, I don’t think the soldier’s a fool, either. He knows that there is no purpose in asking or wondering why. But a man on a ship knows why he is doing what he does and he knows what will happen if he does not. And he feels it then and there because the ship and the wind and the waves answer to him directly. No, he does not know much of courses or navigation. He is too busy for that. Leave that to the captain and the master. There will be no course to follow if the sailor has no skill.
… The ship and the winds and the weather, the waves and currents and the tides, they are our masters and teachers, rewarding skill and punishing folly, all of us equally. We could choose to disobey a captain, but we had no choice to disobey our true masters and live to tell it.
… And all skill does not lie in the invention of ways to do without skill. Meaning that men do their work with what they are given. And the skill is in using the tools well to do the job. Agreed? Well, sir, to many eyes we sailed a tubby, clumsy square-rigged little ship with much to say against her. But she was all that we had and all that we knew.
… And some do marvel that we sailed out on voyages with no certainty. Sailing into the “unknown.” Since we couldn’t be sure of anything, beginning with where on the earth we might be. I would remind them, sir, that the sea is always unknown. Ever changing and moving and never the same. If we had feared the unknown, we would never have stepped off land in the first place. Stepping on board, in the innocence of a ship’s boy or the knowledge of a gray-beard sailor, no matter, is always the brave step into the unknown. A voyage around the world can prove nothing more, since it merely follows the first step. A man’s life is always a voyage into unknown water from his first cry to the sounds of dirt falling on the lid of his coffin. A man lives until he dies and a man will live and be himself in a country cottage or on a ship.
… I could be more windy than a Florida squall in September on this and more, but I won’t. Because no one will know the truth of it unless he believes in it already. And if he believes it, then my words will make no difference. I will say this much, though. More often than not, we made landfall where we intended.
… Now, the proper use of these things was beyond the learning and experience of a seaman. And beyond the old habits of many a master. Which was why we needed a man with more schooling. And such a man was most likely to be a gentleman. We needed his skill and he needed ours. And so we worked together. And the gentleman was tested and learned as much as the least of us. If he had no skill, it was no secret for long. He would never again find able seamen ready to sail with him.
… The great men—Drake, Hawkins, Gilbert, Grenville, Frobisher, Ralegh, and so forth—together with plenty more, remembered or forgotten, enough to make up the crew of a Portuguese India carrack, they never had trouble gathering a crew.
… Keeping a crew for a long time of waiting for winds and for orders to sail is another matter. For lying idle is not yet being a crew all together. There is still a chance and every good reason to change your mind. They were different men and each with different ways, but you can believe that each one was skilled.
… Scholars have made sport of some of these men. To their view of things, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, by refusing to leave the Squirrel in that storm coming back from Newfoundland, is the type of a fool. They should remember there was a crew of men on the Squirrel, and their one chance to live, slim as it was, lay in fighting that cold storm with all the skill and all the strength they could muster. A man who knows he is going to die (and there’s no doubt about it) may be brave as a lion, but is likely, is he not? to spend his last moments of life in as much comfort as he can arrange. Not likely to climb icy ratlines or wrestle canvas and man the pumps with half-frozen hands unless there is some purpose to it. If the ship is sure to go down, he is better advised to pray for his soul, if he is religious; or drink the last of the wine and die laughing if he cannot care less. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, then, reading a book in the midst of a storm, as calm as if the ship were at anchor in harbor, was no kind of a fool. If he saved his own skin, a
nd lost the Squirrel and her crew, his skin would not have been worth the trouble of saving. There was always a chance she might come through. He did his duty (and atoned for the follies of that voyage) by giving his men one chance to live or die well.
… True enough, the Queen said Sir Humphrey Gilbert was a man who never had much good hap at sea. He was a soldier and a schemer. Too choleric in temperament to captain a voyage. But say this for him. When luck has vanished, when old Dame Fortune shows you only the mouth of her arse to kiss, then your best company is a man who knows the hairs of that same place by heart. Misfortune will bring out virtue in him.
… Or take Sir Richard Grenville, aboard the Revenge when she found herself all alone and surrounded by the Spanish fleet with less chance to live than Jack Calvin to be Pope of Rome. Reading of this in books some may think old Grenville was a lunatic fool, in love with his honor and good name. Who can trust a hero, having seen so many were really clowns in disguise? Can’t say I blame them, but they miss some truth.
… Truth is, we cannot trust our lives to anyone but a man who values his honor and his good name. His honor and good name being bound, as much as our lives, to the fate of the ship. A man who values his safety more than his honor will kill us more quickly than the Black Plague. For a man who truly values honor wants to live to enjoy it. And if he can’t live, then he will keep it if he can and leave a good name behind.
… Consider, for a moment, the truth of the Revenge. Alone, surrounded and caught by the Spanish fleet. No matter how that happened. No one knows for certain, and once you’re in such trouble, it serves no one and proves nothing to pause and wonder why it is so. They were there and so were the Spaniards. So they fought all day until the masts were gone and the ship was down to the wales in water. And most were dead and Grenville was half dead with wounds. And at the end, rather than surrender, he ordered the last of his men to blow up the ship. They refused and carried him aboard a Spanish ship which was grappled to the Revenge.
Death of the Fox Page 34