Harper's Round Table, September 17, 1895

A CARGO OF BURNING COAL.

BY AN OLD SHIPMASTER.

The reader may think that while coal must be a dirty cargo it is in other respects an innocent one; but there is no shipmaster who does not dread a long voyage with this kind of freight, for many a fine vessel has been lost owing to the coal taking fire through spontaneous combustion; therefore the greatest care is exercised in carrying it, and whenever the weather will permit, the hatches are opened in order to give the gases in the hold an opportunity to escape. The regular coal-carriers are fitted with ventilators set in different parts of the deck, and the holds of the vessels are kept pure and wholesome by turning the gaping mouths of a number of the huge funnels so that the wind will pour into and down them to the interior of the ship, and keep up a circulation by escaping through other ventilators that are turned in a contrary direction.

A good many years back, when I was an able young sea-man on board the bark Raleigh, I had an experience that was both exciting and strange. Our vessel was loaded with coal, and bound from Philadelphia to Australia. The run down to the equator had been a slow but pleasant one, owing not only to the mild, beautiful weather that we had held right along since sailing, but because the Raleigh had what was something of a novelty in those days, in the way of an excellent and kindly set of officers. We were what is called a "happy ship."

After reaching about the parallel of twenty degrees south we got a stress of weather for over a week, in which several of our sails were blown away and a number of our light spars were wrecked. All our live-stock of pigs and chickens were drowned, owing to the flooding of our decks, for we sat very low in the water.

On the day that we ran into pleasant weather again we started to take off the hatches, when a gassy, choking smell poured out of the opening. The cargo was on fire. There was only one thing to do--to replace the hatches, bore holes through them, and pump streams of water into the hold, endeavoring to drown the fire before it gained additional headway. All hands were called to the task, and for twenty-four hours we worked for our lives, the crew being divided into relief gangs so that the deck-pumps might be kept constantly going.

Before another morning came, however, we knew that the ship was doomed, for the decks grew hot under our feet, and through various crevices the weakening, nauseating fumes of coal-gas poured, overpowering us at times as we plied the pump-handles. The wind died away, leaving the ship becalmed, and over and around her hung a sickly blue pall of vapor. Then the order was given to provision the boats and desert the Raleigh. We pulled a little way from the vessel and rested on our oars, watching the noble ship. As long as she floated there we seemed to have something to cling to on the wide desolate reach of waters.

Shortly afterward the mainmast swayed like a drunken man, then with an awful crash it pitched over the side, dragging with it the foretop-gallant mast and the mizzen-topmast. Through the broken deck a column of winding sulphurous flame shot into the air. The pitch ran wriggling out of the seams of the Raleigh's planking, and fell hissing in little showers into the water alongside as the vessel rolled sluggishly on the swells. An hour later the bark was a mass of flames, and we pulled away to escape from the heat.

There were two boats, the Captain commanding one and the chief mate the other. Each had been provided with a chart and compass, and, in addition to these instruments, the two officers had carried away their sextants in order to navigate by the sun and stars. Into each boat had been stowed food and water, which it was calculated would last about ten days by putting all hands on short allowance; but it was hoped that before the provisions were consumed we would either be picked up by a passing vessel or successful in sailing to Rio Janeiro, distant from us something less than six hundred miles. The Captain's boat being the larger of the two carried the second mate, steward, cook, and eight seamen, while the mate's boat held the carpenter and four seamen--myself included among the latter.

The boats laid alongside of one another while the Captain and mate decided upon the course to be steered; then we separated, made sail to the southeast breeze that had set in, and stretched away into the northwest, the Captain's boat in the lead. The wind gathered strength from the southeast, giving us a following breeze for the port toward which we were steering, and both boats made good weather of the moderate sea then running, sweeping along at the rate of five knots to the hour.

All that afternoon the boats kept within sight of one another, and when night fell not over a quarter of a mile divided us. With the first flush of dawn we swept the expanse of waters, but nothing was to be seen. We were alone. Every little while during the day that followed we would scan the horizon, hoping to lift the long-boat's sail into view; but in vain. We never saw her again, or heard tidings of the twelve brave souls from whom we had parted only a few hours before. That she never reached port is certain; but what her ultimate fate proved, no one knows.

It blew up a gale of wind that afternoon, and I heard the mate say that the storm experienced during the week that was past had recurved, and that we would get it worse than ever on its back track. To prevent the boat from foundering, we unstepped the mast, made a span to it by securing a length of rope to each end, and to the middle of this bridle we bent the boat's painter. Then we dropped this sea-anchor over the bows, and rode to it, the strain upon the painter keeping the head of the boat to the seas that rolled down on us.

When night settled upon the deep it shut out one of the wildest sights of ocean-lashed waters that I had ever seen; but the darkness only intensified the terror, for in the blackness we would feel the frail boat swung with dizzy velocity up and up and up on some mountainous sea, as though she was never going to stop; then, while the great seething crest was roaring in a thousand diabolical voices about us, she would drop down, down, down with a motion that was like falling through space.

It might have been the middle of the night when, worn out from the labor of bailing without intermission for many hours, I threw myself down in the bows of the boat, and locking my arms around one of the thwarts to keep from being pitched about, I fell into an exhausted sleep. I don't know how long I slept, but I was brought to my senses by a sea bursting into the boat, and I found my legs wedged under the seat as I sat half suffocated on the flooring with the water up to my armpits. Looking aft, I could see by the phosporescent glow of the breaking seas that no shapes of men were visible against the background of sky. My companions were gone.

The gunwale of the boat was within a few inches of the water, and it needed only the spume of another wave falling in the boat to sink her. There was no time for indulging in grief over the loss of my shipmates--there was time only for work, and very little for that, if I was to save my life. Tearing off my cap, I used it as a bailer and worked desperately.

At last another morning came, and with it the gale broke; but I allowed the boat to remain hove to during that day and following night, so as to give the seas a chance to go down.

The second morning dawned clear and beautiful, with the ocean subsided into long even swells, and the wind settled down again to the regular trades. Most of the provisions had been ruined by the sea that had filled the boat, but I found two water-tight tins filled with pilot-bread that promised to supply my needs for some time to come. The fresh water in the boat-breakers had kept sweet owing to the bungs being in place.

I had opened one of the tins, and was sitting on a thwart making a breakfast from its contents, when, happening to look astern, I made out, not more than a mile away, the wreck of a small vessel. Everything about the foremast was standing below the cross-trees, but only the splintered stumps of her main and mizzen masts were to be seen above the deck, while the spars themselves, together with their gear, were hanging in a wild confusion over the side. I got in my drag, restepped the mast, set the sail, and bore down upon the wreck. As I drew close to her I expected to see some signs of her crew, for the vessel sat fairly high in the water, and looked seaworthy enough to be navigated into port by making sail upon the fore, and rigging up jury-masts on the two stumps abaft--plenty of material for such to be found in the raffle alongside. No evidence, however, of life showed itself when I rounded under the stern, reading the name Mercedes in large white letters. Letting fly my sheet, I caught the leeward chain-plates, and jumping on board with the painter, I secured the same to a belaying-pin, and looked about me.

I was at once sensible that there was some water in the hold by the peculiar motion of the vessel as she rose and fell to the seas that underran her; but at the same time it was apparent that there could not be anything like a dangerous quantity, otherwise the plane of the deck would have floated much closer to the surface of the sea. Without regarding the nationality of the name, it was clear to me that the vessel was either a Portuguese or Italian trader by the rainbow character of her paint-work, the slovenliness of the rigging, that was yet almost intact upon the fore, and, in spite of the drenching that she had received, the unmistakable evidences of dirt everywhere. There were no boats left, but whether they had been crushed in the wreck of the masts or had received the crew of the barkentine--for such I saw had been her rig--I could not tell.

Entering the cabin, I overhauled the four state-rooms it contained, finding in three of them nothing but such odds and ends as are peculiar to sailors' chests, and in the fourth room, which had been used as a pantry, quite an assortment of boxes and barrels of provisions, although there was proof that some of them had been broken into and rummaged quite recently.

Then I went on deck again and lifted off one of the main hatch covers. No cargo of any nature was to be seen, nothing but a mass of black oily water washing from side to side. It was plain that the vessel was in ballast, that she had sprung a leak in the last gale of wind, that her crew had become frightened, had given her up for lost, and taken to the boats. It was also clear that the leak had stopped itself in some manner--possibly when the old tub had ceased straining after the sea went down--and that if I could pump out the hull I might be able to put her before the wind by making sail on the fore, and so, with the favoring trade winds, let the Mercedes drift along to the port dead away to leeward.

A sailor is never idle long after laying out his work. First I emptied my boat of its water-breakers and provisions, then let it tow astern. Next I got an axe out of the boatswain's locker and chopped away the rigging that held the broken spars to the bark, then when the vessel was clear I squared the topsail-yard by the braces, ran aloft, cast off the gaskets that held the sail, descended to the deck, where I sheeted home the topsail as well as possible, and carried the halyards through a leading block to the capstan, on which I hove away until I had lifted the yard as high as my strength allowed. Next I ran up the jib, sheeted it down, and raced aft to the wheel. I put the tiller up, and the old bucket at once answered her helm. When I got her fairly before the wind I lashed the wheel, and seeing that she would steer herself, with only a little watching, I got to work at the pumps.