CHAPTER X.DANGERS OF A NOVA SCOTIA FOG.
On the 9th of May, we reached Halifax, off which port we were detained in a very disagreeable way; for we had the misfortune to be kept three whole days off the harbour, in one of those Nova Scotia fogs, which are celebrated all over the world. I can hardly give by description an idea of how gloomy they are; but I think their effects can be compared to those of the sirocco; with the further annoyance, that, while they last, we are not able to see far beyond our noses. They are even worse than rain, for they seem to wet one through sooner; while they make every thing appear dreary, and certainly render all the world lazy and discontented.
On the day we made the land, we had great hopes of being able to enter the harbour, as the wind was fair: when, all at once, we were surrounded by so thick a mist, that, for the three succeeding days, we could not see above twenty yards on any side.
There are few things, indeed, more provoking than these fogs off Halifax; for, as they happen to be companions of that very wind, the south-east, which is the best for running in, the navigator is plagued with the tormenting consciousness, that if he could be allowed but a couple of hours’ clear weather, his port would be gained, and his troubles over. The clearing up, therefore, of these odious clouds or veils is about the most delightful thing I know; and the instantaneous effect which a clear sight of the land, or even of the sharp horizon, when far at sea, has on the mind of every person on board, is quite remarkable. All things look bright, fresh, and more beautiful than ever. The stir over the whole ship at these moments is so great, that even persons sitting belowcan tell at once that the fog has cleared away. The rapid clatter of the men’s feet, springing up the hatchways at the lively sound of the boatswain’s call to “make sail!” soon follows. Then comes the cheerful voice of the officer, hailing the topmen to shake out the reefs, trice up the staysails, and rig out the booms. That peculiar and well-known kind of echo, also, by which the sound of the voice is thrown back from the wet sails, contributes, in like manner, to produce a joyous elasticity of spirits, greater, I think, than is excited by most of the ordinary occurrences of a sea life.
A year or two after the time I am speaking of, it was resolved to place a heavy gun upon the rock on which Sambro light-house is built; and, after a good deal of trouble, a long twenty-four pounder was hoisted up to the highest ridge of this prominent station. It was then arranged that, if, on the arrival of any ship off the harbour, in a period of fog, she chose to fire guns, these were to be answered from the light-house; and in this way a kind of audible, though invisible,telegraph might be set to work. If it happened that the officers of the ship were sufficiently familiar with the ground, and possessed nerves stout enough for such a groping kind of navigation, perilous at best, it was possible to run fairly into the harbour, notwithstanding the obscurity, by watching the sound of these guns, and attending closely to the depth of water.
I never was in any ship which ventured upon this feat; but I perfectly recollect a curious circumstance, which occurred, I think, to His Majesty’s ship Cambrian. She had run in from sea towards the coast, enveloped in one of these dense fogs. Of course they took for granted that the light-house and the adjacent land, Halifax included, were likewise covered with an impenetrable cloud or mist. But it so chanced, by what freak of Dame Nature I know not, that the fog, on that day, was confined to the deep water; so that we, who were in the port, could see it, at the distance of several miles from the coast, lying on the ocean like a huge stratum of snow, with anabrupt face, fronting the shore. The Cambrian, lost in the midst of this fog bank, supposing herself to be near the land, fired a gun. To this the light-house replied; and so the ship and the light went on, pelting away, gun for gun, during half the day, without ever seeing one another. The people at the light-house had no means of communicating to the frigate, that, if she would only stand on a little further, she would disentangle herself from the cloud, in which, like Jupiter Olympus of old, she was wasting her thunder.
At last the captain, hopeless of its clearing up, gave orders to pipe to dinner; but as the weather, in all respects except this abominable haze, was quite fine, and the ship was still in deep water, he directed her to be steered towards the shore, and the lead kept constantly going. As one o’clock approached, he began to feel uneasy, from the water shoaling, and the light-house guns sounding closer and closer; but, being unwilling to disturb the men at their dinner, he resolved to stand on for the remainingten minutes of the hour. Lo and behold! however, they had not sailed half a mile further before the flying-jib-boom end emerged from the wall of mist—then the bowsprit shot into daylight—and, lastly, the ship herself glided out of the cloud into the full blaze of a bright and ‘sunshine holyday.’ All hands were instantly turned up to make sail; and the men, as they flew on deck, could scarcely believe their senses when they saw behind them the fog bank, right ahead the harbour’s mouth, with the bold cliffs of Cape Sambro on the left, and, farther still, the ships at their moorings, with their ensigns and pendants blowing out, light and dry in the breeze.
A far different fate, alas! attended His Majesty’s ship Atalante, Captain Frederick Hickey. On the morning of the 10th of November, 1813, this ship stood in for Halifax harbour in very thick weather, carefully feeling her way with the lead, and having look-out men at the jib-boom end, fore-yardarms, and every where else from which a glimpse of the land was likely to be obtained.After breakfast, a fog signal-gun was fired, in the expectation of its being answered by the light-house on Cape Sambro, near which it was known they must be. Within a few minutes, accordingly, a gun was heard in the N.N.W. quarter, exactly where the light was supposed to lie. As the soundings agreed with the estimated position of the ship, and as the guns from the Atalante, fired at intervals of fifteen minutes, were regularly answered in the direction of the harbour’s mouth, it was determined to stand on, so as to enter the port under the guidance of these sounds alone. By a fatal coincidence of circumstances, however, these answering guns were fired, not by Cape Sambro, but by His Majesty’s ship Barrossa, which was likewise entangled by the fog. She, too, supposed that she was communicating with the light-house, whereas it was the guns of the unfortunate Atalante that she heard all the time.
There was, certainly, no inconsiderable risk incurred by running in for the harbour’s mouth under such circumstances. But it willoften happen that it becomes an officer’s duty to put his ship, as well as his life, in hazard; and this appears to have been exactly one of those cases. Captain Hickey was charged with urgent despatches relative to the enemy’s fleet, which it was of the greatest importance should be delivered without an hour’s delay. But there was every appearance of this fog lasting a week; and as he and his officers had passed over the ground a hundred times before, and were as intimately acquainted with the spot as any pilot could be, it was resolved to try the bold experiment; and the ship was forthwith steered in the supposed direction of Halifax.
They had not, however, stood on far, before one of the look-out men exclaimed, “Breakers ahead! Hard a-starboard!” But it was too late, for, before the helm could be put over, the ship was amongst those formidable reefs known by the name of the Sisters’ Rocks, or eastern ledge of Sambro Island. The rudder and half of the sternpost, together with great part of the false keel, were driven off at the first blow, andfloated up alongside. There is some reason to believe, indeed, that a portion of the bottom of the ship, loaded with 120 tons of iron ballast, was torn from the upper works by this fearful blow, and that the ship, which instantly filled with water, was afterwards buoyed up merely by the empty casks, till the decks and sides were burst through, or riven asunder by the waves.
The captain, who, throughout the whole scene, continued as composed as if nothing remarkable had occurred, now ordered the guns to be thrown overboard; but before one of them could be cast loose, or a breeching cut, the ship fell over so much that the men could not stand. It was, therefore, with great difficulty that a few guns were fired as signals of distress. In the same breath that this order was given, Captain Hickey desired the yard tackles to be hooked, in order that the pinnace might be hoisted out; but as the masts, deprived of their foundation, were tottering from side to side, the people were called down again. The quarter boats were then lowered intothe water with some difficulty; but the jolly-boat, which happened to be on the poop undergoing repairs, in being launched overboard, struck against one of the stern davits, bilged, and went down. The ship was now falling fast over on her beam ends, and directions were given to cut away the fore and main-mast. Fortunately, they fell without injuring the large boat on the booms—their grand hope. At the instant of this crash, the ship parted in two, between the main and mizen-masts; and, within a few seconds afterwards, she again broke right across, between the fore and main-masts: so that the poor Atalante now formed a mere wreck, divided into three pieces, crumbling into smaller fragments at every send of the swell.
By this time a considerable crowd of the men had got into the pinnace on the booms, in hopes that she might float off as the ship sunk; but Captain Hickey, seeing that the boat, so loaded, could never swim, desired some twenty of the men to quit her; and, what is particularly worthy of remark, hisorders, which were given with the most perfect coolness, were as promptly obeyed as ever. Throughout the whole of these trying moments, indeed, the discipline of the ship appears to have been maintained, not only without the smallest trace of insubordination, but with a degree of cheerfulness which is described as truly wonderful. Even when the masts fell, the sound of the crashing spars was drowned in the animating huzzas of the undaunted crew, though they were then clinging to the weather gunwale, with the sea, from time to time, making a clean breach over them, and when they were expecting every instant to be carried to the bottom!
As soon as the pinnace was relieved from the pressure of the crowd, she floated off the booms, or rather, was knocked off by a sea, which turned her bottom upwards, and whelmed her into the surf amidst the fragments of the wreck. The people, however, imitating the gallant bearing of their captain, and keeping their eyes fixed upon him, never, for one instant, lost their self-possession.By dint of great exertions, they succeeded not only in righting the boat, but in disentangling her from the confused heap of spars, and the dash of the breakers, so as to place her at a little distance from the wreck, where they waited for further orders from the captain, who, with about forty men, still clung to the poor remains of the gay Atalante—once so much admired!
An attempt was next made to construct a raft, as it was feared the three boats could not possibly carry all hands; but the violence of the waves prevented this, and it was resolved to trust to the boats alone, though they were already, to all appearance, quite full. It was now, however, absolutely necessary to take to them, as the wreck was disappearing rapidly; and in order to pack close, most of the men were removed to the pinnace, where they were laid flat in the bottom, like herrings in a barrel, while the small boats returned to pick off the rest. This was no easy matter in any case, while in others it was impossible; so that many men had to swim for it; others were draggedthrough the waves by ropes, and some were forked off by oars and other small spars.
Amongst the crew there was one famous merry fellow, a black fiddler, who was discovered, at this critical juncture, clinging to the main chains, with his beloved Cremona squeezed tightly but delicately under his arm—a ludicrous picture of distress, and a subject of some joking amongst the men, even at this moment. It soon became absolutely necessary that he should lose one of two things—his fiddle or his life. So, at last, after a painful struggle, the professor and his violin were obliged to part company!
The poor negro musician’s tenacity of purpose arose from sheer love of his art. There was another laugh raised, however, about the same time, at the expense of the captain’s clerk, who, stimulated purely by a sense of duty, lost all recollection of himself, in his anxiety to save what was intrusted to his care, and thus was very nearly being drowned. This zealous person had general instructions, that whenever guns were fired, or any other circumstance occurred likely to shakethe chronometer, he was to hold it in his hand, to prevent the concussion deranging its works. As soon, therefore, as the ship was dashed against the rocks, the clerk’s thoughts naturally turned exclusively on the time-piece. He caught the watch up, and ran on deck; but as he was no swimmer, he was obliged to cling to the mizen-mast, where he stuck fast, careless of every thing but his important charge. When the ship fell over, and the mast became nearly horizontal, he managed to creep along till he reached the mizen-top, where he seated himself in some trepidation—grinning like a monkey that has run off with a cocoa-nut—till the spar gave way, and he was plunged, chronometer and all, right overboard. Every eye was turned to the spot, to see whether this most public-spirited of scribes was ever to appear again; when, to the great joy of all hands, he emerged from the waves—watch still in hand! and was with great difficulty dragged into one of the boats, half drowned.
With the exception of this fortunate chronometer,and the Admiral’s despatches, which the captain had secured when the ship first struck, every thing on board was lost.
The pinnace now contained seventy-nine men and one woman, the cutter forty-two, and the gig eighteen, with which cargoes they barely floated. Captain Hickey was, of course, the last man who left the wreck; though, such were the respect and affection felt for him by his crew, that those who stood along with him on this last vestige of the ship, evinced the greatest reluctance at leaving their commander in such a perilous predicament. So speedy, indeed, was the work of destruction, that by the time the captain was fairly in the boat, the wreck had almost entirely ‘melted into the yest of waves.’ The crew, however, gave her three hearty cheers as she went down, and then finally abandoned the scattered fragments of what had been their house and home for nearly seven years.
The fog still continued as thick as ever; the binacles had both been washed overboard, and no compass could be procured.As the wind was still light, there was great difficulty in steering in a straight line. Had there been a breeze, it would perhaps have been easier to have shaped a course. In this dilemma a resource was hit upon, which, for a time, answered pretty well to guide them. It being known, loosely, before leaving the wreck, in what direction the land was situated, the three boats were placed in a row pointing that way. The sternmost boat then quitted her station in the rear, and pulled ahead till she came in a line with the other two boats, but took care not to go so far as to be lost in the fog; the boat which was now astern then rowed ahead, as the first had done; and so on, doubling along, one after the other. This tardy method of proceeding, however, answered only for a time; and at length they were completely at a loss which way to steer. Precisely at this moment of greatest need, an old quarter-master, Samuel Shanks by name, recollected that at the end of his watch-chain there hung a small compass-seal. This precious discovery was announced tothe other boats by a joyous shout from the pinnace.
The compass being speedily handed into the gig, to the captain, was placed on the top of the chronometer, so nobly saved by the clerk; and as this instrument worked on jimbles, the little needle remained upon it sufficiently steady for steering the boats within a few points.
This was enough to insure hitting the land, from which they had been steering quite wide. Before reaching the shore, they fell in with an old fisherman, who piloted them to a bight called Portuguese Cove, where they all landed in safety, at the distance of twenty miles from the town of Halifax.
The fishermen lighted great fires, to warm their shivering guests, most of whom were very lightly clad, and all, of course, dripping wet; many of them, also, were miserably cramped by close packing in the boats. Some of the men, especially of those who entered the boats last, having been obliged to swim for their lives, had thrown off everything but their trousers; so that the only respectably-dressed person, out of the whole party was Old Shanks, the owner of the watch and compass-seal—a steady, hard-a-weather sailor, who took the whole affair as deliberately as if shipwreck had been an every-day occurrence. He did not even take off his hat, except, indeed, to give his good ship a cheer as she went to the bottom.
The future measures were soon decided upon. The captain carried the three boats round to the harbour, taking with him the men who had suffered most from fatigue, and those who were worst off for clothes. The officers then set out with the rest, to march across the country to Halifax, in three divisions, keeping together with as much regularity as if they had been going upon some previously-arranged piece of service. Very few of the party had any shoes, an inconvenience which was felt more severely than it would otherwise have been, from their having to trudge over a country but partially cleared of wood. Notwithstanding all this, there was not a single straggler;and the whole ship’s company, officer, man, and boy, assembled in the evening at Halifax, in as exact order as if their ship had met with no accident.
I have been more particular in describing this shipwreck, from its appearing to offer several uncommon and some useful details, well worthy, I think, of the notice of practical men.
It is rather an unusual combination of disasters for a ship to be so totally wrecked, as to be actually obliterated from the face of the waters, in the course of a quarter of an hour, in fine weather, in the day-time, on well-known rocks, and close to a light-house; but without the loss of a single man, or the smallest accident to any one person on board.
In the next place, it is highly important to observe, that the lives of the crew, in all probability, would not, and perhaps could not, have been saved, had the discipline been, in the smallest degree, less exactly maintained. Had any impatience been manifested by the people to rush into the boats, or had the captain not possessed sufficientauthority to reduce the numbers which had crowded into the pinnace, when she was still resting on the booms, at least half of the crew must have lost their lives.
It was chiefly, therefore, if not entirely, to the personal influence which Captain Hickey possessed over the minds of all on board, that their safety was owing. Their habitual confidence in his talents and professional knowledge had, from long experience, become so great, that every man in the ship, in this extremity of danger, instinctively turned to him for assistance, and, seeing him so completely master of himself, they relinquished to his well-known and often tried sagacity, the formidable task of extricating them from their perils. It is at such moments as these, indeed, that the grand distinction between man and man is developed, and the full ascendency of a powerful and well-regulated mind makes itself felt. The slightest hesitation on the captain’s part, the smallest want of decision, or any uncertainty as to what was the very best thing to be done, if betrayedby a word or look of his, would have shot, like an electric spark, through the whole ship’s company—a tumultuous rush would have been made to the boats—and two out of the three, if not all, must have been swamped, and every man drowned!
Captain Hickey and his crew had been serving together in the same ship for many years before, in the course of which period they had acquired so thorough an acquaintance with one another, that this great trial, instead of loosening the discipline, only augmented its compactness, and thus enabled the commander to bring all his knowledge, and all the resources of his vigorous understanding, to bear at once, with such admirable effect, upon the difficulties by which he was surrounded.
There are some men who actually derive as much credit from their deportment under the severest losses, as others earn by brilliant success; and it may certainly be said that Captain Hickey is one of these: for, although he had the great misfortune to lose his ship, he must enjoy the satisfactionof knowing, that his skill and firmness, rendered effective by the discipline he had been so many years in perfecting, enabled him, in this last extremity, to save the lives of more than a hundred persons, who, but for him, in all human probability, must have perished.