It Was George Ballmer, A Young English
Sailor, Who Was Prized By The Officers As An Active Lad And Willing
Seaman, and by the crew as a lively, hearty fellow, and a good shipmate.
He was going aloft to fit
A strap round the main top-mast-head,
for ringtail halyards, and had the strap and block, a coil of halyards
and a marline-spike about his neck. He fell from the starboard futtock
shrouds, and not knowing how to swim, and being heavily dressed, with all
those things round his neck, he probably sank immediately. We pulled
astern, in the direction in which he fell, and though we knew that there
was no hope of saving him, yet no one wished to speak of returning, and we
rowed about for nearly an hour, without the hope of doing anything,
but unwilling to acknowledge to ourselves that we must give him up.
At length we turned the boat's head and made towards the vessel.
Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man
dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and "the mourners go
about the streets;" but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost,
there is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it,
which give to it an air of awful mystery. A man dies on shore - you
follow his body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot. You are
often prepared for the event. There is always something which helps
you to realize it when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed.
A man is shot down by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains
an object, and a real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you -
at your side - you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and
nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then, too, at sea - to use
a homely but expressive phrase - you miss a man so much. A dozen
men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea,
and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their
own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him
at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces
or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth
in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch
is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to
lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound
of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and
each of your senses feels the loss.
All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect
of it remains upon the crew for some time. There is more kindness
shown by the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another.
There is more quietness and seriousness.
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