MISSING.
MISSING.
My name, with that of my crew of forty men, has been posted for two years at Lloyds in New York and London, followed by the single word “Missing.” This statement is still true of the two score of good men who sailed with me in the steamer Caribas, but I have returned to New York alive.
I am an American, was born and raised in Brooklyn, and served my apprenticeship before the mast on the “Black Ball” line between New York and Liverpool.
I then entered the employment of Cameron & Co., at the age of 23, as second mate on one of the Australian ships, and made four voyages ’round the Horn to Melbourne. As we sailed on our return journey the last time I was made first mate, and, although only 27 years of age, an accident to the captain during the first week gave me command of the ship for the three months that succeeded.
On my arrival at New York I was offered a position as captain of a tramp steamer sent out from Plymouth by Triplett & Jones. That firm is one of the largest owners of vessels for charter in Great Britain. The little ironsteamship was already in New York, and I went down to the Erie Basin to look her over. The Caribas, named after the Marquis of that name, was a trim craft. Her engines were of the newest pattern. She had no accommodations for carrying passengers, but her general fittings and equipment were excellent. The cabin and the captain’s quarters were finished in mahogany; the forecastle was in hardwood, and very comfortable for the men. Although I had previously had a contempt for a tramp steamer and thought the command of such a craft unworthy of a deep-water sailor, I decided to accept this position, and to follow for a few years the wandering life it entailed.
There was some glamour attaching to the position, because, unlike the master of a transatlantic steamship, whose route is over the same course week after week, the commander of an ocean tramp visits all parts of the world. Entering port to deliver his cargo of goods to a consignee, he knows not whether a cable order awaiting him there will take him to the North Atlantic or the Indian Ocean, to Halifax or to Singapore. He must accept his duty in any climate; and the likelihood is that in the end his friends and employers will be watching the register at Lloyds, just as were mine through two long and lingering years.
The commander of a tramp steamer is a commercial knight-errant of the sea—a homeless wanderer, cut off from all ties of blood and affection, and devoted to the remorseless accumulation of gain for people personally unknown to him. His pay is always small, and the only opportunity he has of increasing it is by an occasional passenger from port to port, for whom he can surrender his stateroom and enjoy instead a sofa in the cabin.
Romantic as is his life, I never knew the commander of an ocean tramp who excelled at handling the English language. He may know how to box the compass, to calculate the latitude and longitude from the midday sun,to follow out the chart, or to work down a lee shore with the lead, but when it comes to writing, he usually lards his text with so many words only known to sailor men that the general reader is mystified and bored. While, modestly, I might claim a somewhat varied experience in the forecastle and the cabin, this is my first attempt at wielding a pen, and I shall rely very much upon the trusty blue pencil of the editor to render what I shall say creditable to me.