When Such
Commanders And Such Ships, As I Have Just Described, Shall Become
More Numerous, The Hope Of The Friends
Of seamen will be greatly
strengthened; and it is encouraging to remember that the efforts
among common sailors will soon
Raise up such a class; for those of
them who are brought under these influences will inevitably be the
ones to succeed to the places of trust and authority. If there is
on earth an instance where a little leaven may leaven the whole
lump, it is that of the religious shipmaster.
It is to the progress of this work among seamen that we must look
with the greatest confidence for the remedying of those numerous
minor evils and abuses that we so often hear of. It will raise
the character of sailors, both as individuals and as a class.
It will give weight to their testimony in courts of justice,
secure better usage to them on board ship, and add comforts to
their lives on shore and at sea. There are some laws that can
be passed to remove temptation from their way and to help them
in their progress; and some changes in the jurisdiction of the
lower courts, to prevent delays, may, and probably will, be made.
But, generally speaking, more especially in things which concern
the discipline of ships, we had better labor in this great work,
and view with caution the proposal of new laws and arbitrary
regulations, remembering that most of those concerned in the
making of them must necessarily be little qualified to judge
of their operation.
Without any formal dedication of my narrative to that body of men,
of whose common life it is intended to be a picture, I have yet
borne them constantly in mind during its preparation. I cannot
but trust that those of them, into whose hands it may chance to
fall, will find in it that which shall render any professions of
sympathy and good wishes on my part unnecessary. And I will take
the liberty, on parting with my reader, who has gone down with us
to the ocean, and "laid his hand upon its mane," to commend to his
kind wishes, and to the benefit of his efforts, that class of men
with whom, for a time, my lot was cast. I wish the rather to do
this, since I feel that whatever attention this book may gain,
and whatever favor it may find, I shall owe almost entirely to
that interest in the sea, and those who follow it, which is so
easily excited in us all.
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AFTER
It was in the winter of 1835-6 that the ship Alert, in the prosecution
of her voyage for hides on the remote and almost unknown coast
of California, floated into the vast solitude of the Bay of San
Francisco. All around was the stillness of nature. One vessel,
a Russian, lay at anchor there, but during our whole stay not a
sail came or went. Our trade was with remote Missions, which sent
hides to us in launches manned by their Indians. Our anchorage was
between a small island, called Yerba Buena, and a gravel beach
in a little bight or cove of the same name, formed by two small
projecting points. Beyond, to the westward of the landing-place,
were dreary sand-hills, with little grass to be seen, and few trees,
and beyond them higher hills, steep and barren, their sides gullied
by the rains. Some five or six miles beyond the landing-place,
to the right, was a ruinous Presidio, and some three or four miles
to the left was the Mission of Dolores, as ruinous as the Presidio,
almost deserted, with but few Indians attached to it, and but little
property in cattle. Over a region far beyond our sight there were
no other human habitations, except that an enterprising Yankee,
years in advance of his time, had put up, on the rising ground
above the landing, a shanty of rough boards, where he carried on
a very small retail trade between the hide ships and the Indians.
Vast banks of fog, invading us from the North Pacific, drove in
through the entrance, and covered the whole bay; and when they
disappeared, we saw a few well-wooded islands, the sand-hills on
the west, the grassy and wooded slopes on the east, and the vast
stretch of the bay to the southward, where we were told lay the
Missions of Santa Clara and San José, and still longer stretches to
the northward and northeastward, where we understood smaller bays
spread out, and large rivers poured in their tributes of waters.
There were no settlements on these bays or rivers, and the few
ranchos and Missions were remote and widely separated. Not only
the neighborhood of our anchorage, but the entire region of the
great bay, was a solitude. On the whole coast of California there
was not a lighthouse, a beacon, or a buoy, and the charts were
made up from old and disconnected surveys by British, Russian,
and Mexican voyagers. Birds of prey and passage swooped and
dived about us, wild beasts ranged through the oak groves, and as
we slowly floated out of the harbor with the tide, herds of deer
came to the water's edge, on the northerly side of the entrance,
to gaze at the strange spectacle.
On the evening of Saturday, the 13th of August, 1859, the superb
steamship Golden Gate, gay with crowds of passengers, and lighting
the sea for miles around with the glare of her signal lights of red,
green, and white, and brilliant with lighted saloons and staterooms,
bound up from the Isthmus of Panama, neared the entrance to San
Francisco, the great centre of a world-wide commerce. Miles out at
sea, on the desolate rocks of the Farallones, gleamed the powerful
rays of one of the most costly and effective light-houses in the
world. As we drew in through the Golden Gate, another light-house
met our eyes, and in the clear moonlight of the unbroken California
summer we saw, on the right, a large fortification protecting the
narrow entrance, and just before us the little island of Alcatraz
confronted us, - one entire fortress.
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