New London High School - Whaler Yearbook (New London, CT)

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Bulkeley News VOL. IX. FEBRUARY, 1913. No. 2. A Haze on the Sea. A Salt Sea Yarn at Told by Captain Jack. I HAVE noticed an article under the head ing “Jibboom Observations” appearing in a local paper recently, deploring the fact that it is extremely difficult to procure American crews for sailing vessels. I was reminded of an incident in the old days of whaling when I was a youngster. In those days sailing was a profession and no man was considered a sailor who had not crossed the line and been shaved by Father Neptune. Those sailors who had enjoyed this exhilarating scene looked with contempt on the clam diggers such as we see sailing in small boats from New London harbor. I’ve often spun this yarn about my first voyage across the Equator, but perhaps it will bear repitition. The warm dark night of the tropical latitudes (we were between Cayenne and Pernambuco) had fallen upon a calm softly undulating sea. I knew we were nearing the equator for although as a rule the officers did not inform the men before the mast of the ships position, the steward had over-heard the captain and the mate conversing in the cabin and from him, through the cook the information got to the foe’s le, I, a boy of twelve, was on my first voyage to these parts. For several days there had seemed to float to my ears vague, foggy mention of Neptune. Neptune, the father of the sea. No one seemed to talk at length about him. It was just in the air, as we say. On this night for some reason or other I was continually kept busy. For want of anything else I was ordered to put a whipping on a bit of rope’s end about four inches from the end and then to unravel the end. A senseless thing, it seemed; but it was for me to obey, not to inquire into the necessity of performing the task assigned. Suddenly there was a great hubub in the bow, and, looking up, I saw a mass of flame like a vessel afire floating some two hundred yards to leward. My task of fagging the rope done I ran forward. All was excitement. Cries of “Hail Neptune ! We’re crossin’ the line | see his chariot!” almost awaked the sleeping sea. I was ignorant of the meaning of it all and yet it seemed that the cries were in a way addressed to me. Soon, two characters, Neptune and his clerk, dressed in hideous costumes, came up over the night-heads, slowly toward the excited group in the waist. I began to get interested. I sat down on the edge of a deck tub, for no particular reason, but merely because the deck tub (filled with water) was the the only thing available to set on. All, except myself, hailed Father Neptune. Then the august father with a deep voice called for greenhorns, that is the ones who were crossing the equator for the first time. Old Jim Defly boats’n took Neptune in tow and advanced toward me. As Defly had

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TO LINCOLN JUST AS A STRUGGLING PINE WILL HOLD ITS OWN WHEN EVERY BOISTEROUS GUST OF WINTERS STORM WILL TRY TO HURL IT DOWN. ITS BRANCHES TORN BY BITTER WAR. ITS TRUNK WITH FURY BLOWN; JUST AS A PINE. WHEN WINDY NIGHT HAS FLOWN. EXTENDS ITS NEEDLES IN THE CRIMSON MORN. AND STRETCHES OUT TRIUMPHANT IN THE DAWN ONLY I O FEEL A WOODMAN HEW IT DOWN ; JUST SUCH WAS HE. THIS MAN OF SPACIOUS MIND. BESET BY CONFLICTS WILD AND NATION'S NEED AND HAUNTED BY BELLONA'S WICKED WIND UNTIL THE CRIMSON MORNING CAME INDEED. THEN SPREAD HE OUT HIS ARMS TO TAKE YE IN. YE WEARY SLAVES. A MARTYRED LINCOLN HE. D '13.

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2 BULKELEY NEWS known me since the day of my birth and hence knew that this was my first voyage of any sort, I was forced to admit that I was a greenhorn. “ Then, said Neptune in a sombre voice, “ then, by the laws of the sea you must be shaved by Neptune, Father of the Mighty Ocean. Clerk fetch the lather and brush and razor.” While these articles were being procured I was put in double rope yams. I then caught sight of the tonsorial apparatus. The lather which the clerk was mixing in a soup’n bully tin, looked bad and smelled worse. It was made up of tar, slush, and filth from the pig-pen (we earned live stock). The lather brush was the very piece of rope which I myself, had unraveled ten minutes before. As for the razor, it was a piece of rusty hoop iron bent on to a belaying pin. The lather was slapped on to my face liberally. The nasty, sickening mess got in my nostrils, ears, and mouth, but I was helpless. Then the crew looked on and roared while Neptune who was anything but a barber, scraped my beardless face with the “ razor. This painful operation over, I was given a speaking trumpet, such as is used in talking from ship to ship, and was ordered to hail to Neptune three times. I put the trumpet to my mouth and said in a weak voice, “ Hail Neptune ” “ Louder shouted the clerk. “ Hail Neptune I ” “ Again f ” Hail Nep—” I got no further. A bucket of salt water was shot up the trumpet into my face and at the same time I was gently capsized into the decktub of water upon which I had sat. I was completely swamped, surprised, frightened. As for Neptune, he disappeared in the darkness. I noticed next day that Len Smith’s voice resembled Neptune’s. The appearance of the sea-god’s flaming chariot had coincided with the disappearance of a barrel of whale oil. This cost the crew a day’s pay each. Such was the shaving of a greenhorn, a time honered custom of yore. But since the decline of American seamanship, life at sea has taken on a new aspect and the former duties of the man before the mast are performed by steam engines and foreigners who have no interest in customs or, in fact, in anything but to procure the daily stipend. Q. E. D, ’ 13. (Sj An Automobile Trip to Niagara Falls. THE fifteenth of June, 1912, with a party of friends, I left New London. It was as cool and beautiful a day as one could wish. On leaving New London I went by way of the state road across the Connecticut River. We passed through Middletown, Vethersfield, where the state prision is located, through Hartford, the capital of the state, and Springfield, in Massachusetts, where the most widely known rifles are made, to Westfield. Here we stopped to see what is said to be the largest oak tree in New England. This tree is twenty-seven feet in diameter, with no branches within fifty feet of the ground. We then passed on through Lenox to Pittsfield, where we stopped at the Maplewood Hotel over night. The next morning, after a fine view of Mount Greylock, the highest in Massachusetts, we left for Albany. We passed through Lebanon Springs. At Lebanon Springs we visited the old hotel, famous for its hot springs, and where Lafayette, on his last visit to the United