Especially He
Spoke Of His Favorite Seaman, French John.
John, after a few more
years at sea, became a boatman, and kept his neat boat at the end of
Granite Wharf, and was ready to take all, but delighted to take any
of us of the old Alert's crew, to sail down the harbor.
One day
Captain Faucon went to the end of the wharf to board a vessel in
the stream, and hailed for John. There was no response, and his
boat was not there. He inquired of a boatman near, where John
was. The time had come that comes to all! There was no loyal
voice to respond to the familiar call, the hatches had closed
over him, his boat was sold to another, and he had left not a
trace behind. We could not find out even where he was buried.
Mr. Richard Brown, of Marblehead, our chief mate in the Alert,
commanded many of our noblest ships in the European trade,
a general favorite. A few years ago, while stepping on board
his ship from the wharf, he fell from the plank into the hold
and was killed. If he did not actually die at sea, at least
he died as a sailor, - he died on board ship.
Our second mate, Evans, no one liked or cared for, and I know
nothing of him, except that I once saw him in court, on trial
for some alleged petty tyranny towards his men, - still a subaltern
officer.
The third mate, Mr. Hatch, a nephew of one of the owners, though only
a lad on board the ship, went out chief mate the next voyage, and rose
soon to command some of the finest clippers in the California and
India trade, under the new order of things, - a man of character,
good judgment, and no little cultivation.
Of the other men before the mast in the Alert, I know nothing of
peculiar interest. When visiting, with a party of ladies and
gentlemen, one of our largest line-of-battle ships, we were
escorted about the decks by a midshipman, who was explaining
various matters on board, when one of the party came to me and
told me that there was an old sailor there with a whistle round
his neck, who looked at me and said of the officer, "he can't show
him anything aboard a ship." I found him out, and, looking into
his sunburnt face, covered with hair, and his little eyes drawn
up into the smallest passages for light, - like a man who had
peered into hundreds of northeasters, - there was old "Sails"
of the Alert, clothed in all the honors of boatswain's-mate.
We stood aside, out of the cun of the officers, and had a good
talk over old times. I remember the contempt with which he turned
on his heel to conceal his face, when the midshipman (who was a
grown youth) could not tell the ladies the length of a fathom,
and said it depended on circumstances. Notwithstanding his advice
and consolation to "Chips," in the steerage of the Alert, and his
story of his runaway wife and the flag-bottomed chairs (ante, p.
249), he confessed to me that he had tried marriage again, and had
a little tenement just outside the gate of the yard.
Harry Bennett, the man who had the palsy, and was unfeelingly left
on shore when the Alert sailed, came home in the Pilgrim, and I had
the pleasure of helping to get him into the Massachusetts General
Hospital. When he had been there about a week, I went to see him
in his ward, and asked him how he got along. "Oh! first-rate
usage, sir; not a hand's turn to do, and all your grub brought
to you, sir." This is a sailor's paradise, - not a hand's turn
to do, and all your grub brought to you. But an earthly paradise
may pall. Bennett got tired of in-doors and stillness, and was soon
out again, and set up a stall, covered with canvas, at the end of one
of the bridges, where he could see all the passers-by, and turn
a penny by cakes and ale. The stall in time disappeared, and I
could learn nothing of his last end, if it has come.
Of the lads who, beside myself, composed the gig's crew, I know
something of all but one. Our bright-eyed, quick-witted little
cockswain, from the Boston public schools, Harry May, or Harry Bluff,
as he was called, with all his songs and gibes, went the road to ruin
as fast as the usual means could carry him. Nat, the "bucket-maker,"
grave and sober, left the seas, and, I believe, is a hack-driver in
his native town, although I have not had the luck to see him since
the Alert hauled into her berth at the North End.
One cold winter evening, a pull at the bell, and a woman in distress
wished to see me. Her poor son George, - George Somerby, - "you
remember him, sir; he was a boy in the Alert; he always talks
of you, - he is dying in my poor house." I went with her, and in
a small room, with the most scanty furniture, upon a mattress on
the floor, - emaciated, ashy pale, with hollow voice and sunken
eyes, - lay the boy George, whom we took out a small, bright boy
of fourteen from a Boston public school, who fought himself into
a position on board ship (ante, p. 231), and whom we brought home
a tall, athletic youth, that might have been the pride and support
of his widowed mother. There he lay, not over nineteen years of
age, ruined by every vice a sailor's life absorbs. He took my
hand in his wasted feeble fingers, and talked a little with his
hollow, death-smitten voice. I was to leave town the next day
for a fortnight's absence, and whom had they to see to them?
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