The Seiners Part 1

The Seiners.

by James B. (James Brendan) Connolly.

I

THE NEW VESSEL OF WITHROW'S

It was only a few days before this that the new vessel of Mr.

Withrow's, built by him, as everybody supposed, for Maurice Blake, had been towed around from Ess.e.x, and I remember how Maurice stood on the dock that afternoon and looked her over.

There was not a bolt or a plank or a seam in her whole hull, not a square inch inside or out, that he had not been over half a dozen times while she was on the stocks; but now he had to look her over again, and as he looked his eyes took on a s.h.i.+ne. She had been designed by a man famous the world over, and was intended to beat anything that ever sailed past Eastern Point.

She certainly was a great-looking model of a vessel, and "If she only sails and handles half so well as she looks, she'll do for me," said Maurice. "Yes, sir, and if she's up to what I think she ought to be, I wouldn't be afraid to bet my share of what we make out South that she'll hold her own with anything out of Gloucester--give her a few weeks to loosen up, of course."

That was a good deal to say, for it was a great fleet of vessels sailing out of Gloucester; but even so, even allowing for a young skipper's pride in his first crack vessel, it meant a whole lot coming like that from Maurice Blake.

And on top of all that Maurice and Withrow had to quarrel, though what about I never found out. I only know that I was ready to believe that Withrow was to blame, for I liked Maurice and did not like Withrow, even though Withrow was the man from whom I drew my pay every week.

And yet I could not understand it, for Maurice Blake had been far and away the most successful skipper sailing for Withrow, and Withrow always had a good eye for the dollar.

No more came of it until this particular morning, some days after Maurice and Withrow had quarrelled. Wesley Marrs and Tommie Clancy, two men that I never tired of listening to, were on the dock and sizing up the new vessel. Wesley Marrs was himself a great fisherman, and master at this time of the wonderful Lucy Foster.

When she swings the main boom over And she feels the wind abaft,

The way she'll walk to Gloucester'll Make a steamer look a raft.

For she's the Lucy Foster, She's a seiner out of Gloucester,--

was the way the fishermen of the port used to sing about the Lucy; while Tommie Clancy was Maurice Blake's closest friend.

With ballast stored, masts stepped, rigging set up, and sails bent, setting as sweet as could be to her lines and the lumpers beginning to get her ready for the mackerel season, the Fred Withrow was certainly a picture.

After a couple of extra long pulls, blowing the smoke into the air, and another look above and below, "That one--she'll sail some or I don't know," said Wesley.

"She sure will," said Tommie; "and it's a jeesly shame Maurice isn't to have her." Then turning to me, "What in the devil's name ails that man you work for, Joey?"

I said I didn't know.

"No, nor n.o.body else knows. I'd like to work in that store for him for about ten minutes. I think I'd make him say something in that ten minutes that would give me a good excuse for heaving him out the window. He had an argument with Maurice, Wesley, and Maurice don't know what it was half about, but he knows he came near to punching Withrow."

And Wesley and Tommie had to talk that out; and between the pair of them, thinking of what they said, I thought I ought to walk back to the store with barely a civil look for my employer, who didn't like that at all, for he generally wanted to hand out the black looks himself.

Then the girls--my cousin Nellie and her particular chum, Alice Foster--came in to weigh themselves, and also to remind me, they said, that I was to take them over to Ess.e.x the next day for the launching of the new vessel for the Duncan firm, which had been designed by a friend of Nell's, a young fellow named Will Somers, who was just beginning to get a name in Gloucester for fast and able models of vessels. Withrow, who was not over-liberal with his holidays, said I might go--mostly, I suspect, because Alice Foster had said she would not make the trip without Nell, and Nell would not go unless I went too.

Then Nell and Miss Foster went on with the business of weighing themselves. That was in line with the latest fad. It was always something or other, and physical culture was in the air at this time with every other girl in Gloucester, so far as I could see--either Indian-club swinging or dumb-bell drilling, long walks, and things of that kind, and telling how much better they felt after it. My cousin Nell, who went in for anything that anybody ever told her about, was trying to reduce her weight. According to some perfect-form charts, or something or other on printed sheets, she weighed seven pounds more than she should for her height. I thought she was about the right weight myself, and told her so, but she said no--she was positively fat. "Look at Alice," she said, "she's just the thing."

I looked at Alice--Miss Foster I always called her myself--and certainly she was a lovely girl, though perhaps a little too conscious of it. She was one of the few that weren't going in for anything that I could see. She wasn't even weighing herself, or at least she didn't until Mr. Withrow, with his company manners in fine working order, asked her if she wouldn't allow him to weigh her.

There were people in town who said it was not for nothing that Alice Foster was so chummy with my cousin Nell. They meant, of course, that being chummy with Nell, who came down regularly to see me, gave herself a good excuse to come along and so have a word with Withrow. Fred Withrow himself was a big, well-built, handsome man--an unusually good-looking man, I'd call him--and a great heart-breaker, according to report--some of it his own. And he was wealthy, too. I did not know, but somehow or other I did not believe it, or maybe it was that I hoped rather than believed that Miss Foster did not care particularly for him; for I did not like him myself, although I worked for him and was taking his money. Being day in and day out with him in the store, you see I saw him pretty much as he really was, and I hated to think of a fine girl--for with all her cool ways I knew Miss Foster was that--marrying him. Just how Withrow thought he stood with Miss Foster I did not know--he was a pretty close-mouthed man when he wanted to be. Miss Foster herself was that reserved kind of a girl that you cannot always place. She struck me as being a girl that would die before she would confess a weakness or a troublesome feeling. And yet, without knowing how it came there, there was always a notion in the back of my head that made me half-believe that she did not come to the store with my cousin out of pure companions.h.i.+p. There was something besides--and what could it be but Withrow?

After the weighing was done Nell asked me all at once, "I hear, Joe, that Captain Hollis is going to have your new vessel? How is that?

We--I thought that Captain Blake was going master of her--and such a pretty vessel!"

I answered that I didn't know how it was, and looked over at my employer, as much as to say, "Maybe he can tell you."

I think now that I must have been a pretty impudent lad, letting my employer know what I thought of him as I did in those days. I think, too, he had a pretty shrewd notion of what I thought of himself and Maurice Blake. At any rate, after the girls had gone, he worked himself into a fine bit of temper, and I talked back at him, and the end of it was that he discharged me--or 1 quit--I'm not sure which. I do know that it was rapid-fire talk while it lasted.

It was some satisfaction to me to tell Withrow just about what I did think of him before I went. He didn't quite throw me out of the door, although he was big enough for that; but he looked as if he wanted to.

And maybe he would have, too, or tried it, only I said, "Mind I don't give you what Tommie Clancy threatened to give you once," and his nerve went flat. I couldn't have handled him as Clancy had any more than I could have hove a barrel of salt mackerel over my head, which was what the strong fishermen of the port were doing about that time to prove their strength; but the bluff went, and I couldn't help throwing out my chest as I went out the door and thinking that I was getting to be a great judge of human nature.

II

A LITTLE JOG ALONG THE DOCKS

I was sorry to lose my job. I was twenty years old, without a trade or special knowledge of any kind, and beyond the outfitting of fis.h.i.+ng vessels, knowing nothing of any business, and with no more than a high school education--and that two years behind me--and I knew of no place in Gloucester where I could begin all over and right away get as much pay as I had left behind me. I might go to Boston, of course, and try for something there--I was not ten minutes out of Withrow's before I thought of doing that. But a little further thought and I knew there were more capable men than I walking the streets of Boston looking for work. However, a lot could happen before I would have to worry, and so I decided to take the air and think it over.

I might go fis.h.i.+ng certainly--I had had a little experience in my school vacations--if my mother would only stand for it. As to that I did not know. If it came to fis.h.i.+ng or starving--one or the other--then of course she would have to let me go fis.h.i.+ng. But my father had been lost on the Grand Banks with his vessel and all hands--and then one brother was already fis.h.i.+ng. So I hardly thought she would allow me, and anyway I knew she would never have a good night's rest while I was out.

However, I kept thinking it over. To get away by myself I took a ride over to Ess.e.x. There I knew I would find half a dozen vessels on the stocks, and there they were--the latest vessel for the Duncan firm and three more for other firms. I knew one of the s.h.i.+p-carpenters in Elwell's yard, Levi Woodbury, and he was telling me about some of the vessels that had been launched lately. "Of course," he said, "you saw the one launched a few days ago from here--that one built for Mr.

Withrow?"

I said I had, and that she was a wonder to look at and that I wished Maurice Blake, and not Sam Hollis, was to have her.

"Yes," said Levi, "and a pity. Maurice Blake could have sailed her right, though for that matter Sam Hollis is a clever hand to sail a vessel, too. And she ought to sail some, that vessel. But look here at this one for the Duncans and to be launched to-morrow.

Designed by Will Somers--know him? Yes? A nice young fellow. Ain't she able-looking?"

She certainly was, and handsome, and Levi went on to tell me about her. He showed me where she was like and where she differed from the Lucy Foster, the Fred Withrow, the Nannie O, the Colleen Bawn, and the others which were then causing trouble in Gloucester with crews fighting over their good qualities. I did not know a whole lot about vessels, but having been born in Gloucester and having soaked in the atmosphere all my life and loving vessels besides, I had a lot of notions about them. And I liked this last Duncan vessel. By the wind and in a sea-way, it struck me she would be a wonder. There was something more than just the fine lines of her. There is that about vessels. You can take two vessels, model them alike, rig them alike, handle them alike, and still one will sail rings around the other. And why is it? I've heard a hundred fishermen at different times say that and then ask, Why is it? This one was awfully sharp forward, too sharp some might have said, with little more forefoot than most of the late-built flyers; but she was deep and had a quarter that I knew would stand up under her sail. I liked the after-part of her. Racing machines are all right for a few months or a year or two and in smooth water, but give me a vessel that can stand up under sail. I thought I could see where, if they gave her sail enough, especially aft, and a skipper that would drive her, she might do great things. And certainly she ought to be a comfort in a blow and bring a fellow home--and there's a whole lot in that--being in a vessel that you feel will bring you home again.

I looked over the others, but none of them held me like the Duncan vessel, and I soon came back to Gloucester and took a walk along the waterfront.

It was well into March at this time--the third week in March, I remember--and there was a great business doing along the docks. The salt bankers were almost ready to leave--twenty-eight or thirty sail fitting out for the Grand Banks. And then there were the seiners--the mackerel catchers--seventy or eighty sail of them making ready for the Southern cruise. All that meant that things would be humming for a while. So I took a walk along the docks to see it.

Most of the vessels that had been fis.h.i.+ng during the winter had been stripped of their winter sails, and now aboard these they were bending on the summer suits and slinging up what top spars had not already been sent up. For the vessels that had been laid up all winter and stripped of everything, they were getting out the gear from the lofts.

Everywhere it was topmasts being sent up, sails being dragged out, stays swayed taut, halyards and sheets rove--an overhauling generally. On the railways--Burnham's, Parkhurst's, and Tarr's--were vessels having their bottoms scrubbed and painted and their topsides lined out. And they all looked so handsome and smelt so fine with their riggings being tarred, not with the smoky tar that people ash.o.r.e put on house-roofs, but the fine rich-smelling tar that goes into vessels' rigging; and there was the black and dark sea-green paint for the sides, with the gold or yellow or sometimes red stripe to mark the run, and main and quarter rails being varnished.

And the seine-boats! If there is anything afloat that sets more easily on the water than a seine-boat I never saw it, unless it might be a birch-bark canoe--and who'd want to be caught out in a blow in a canoe? The seine-boats all looked as natural as so many sea-gulls--thirty-six or thirty-eight feet long, green or blue bottoms to just above the waterline so that it would show, and above that all clear white except for the blue or red or yellow or green decorations that some skippers liked. And the seines that went with them were coming in wagons from the net and twine factory, tanned brown or tarred black and all ready to be hauled on to the vessels' decks or stowed in the holds below, until the fleet should be in among the mackerel to the south'ard--off Hatteras or Cape May or somewhere down that way.

To feel all that and the rest of it--to walk to the tops of your shoes in pine chips in the spar yards, to measure the lengths of booms and gaffs for yourself if you weren't sure who were going to spread the big mainsails, to go up in the sail-lofts and see the sailmakers, bench after bench of them, making their needles and the long waxed threads fly through the canvas that it seemed a pity wasn't to stay so white forever--to see them spread the canvas out along the chalk lines on the varnished floor, fixing leach and luff ropes to them and putting the leather-bound cringles in, and putting them in too so they'd stay, for by and by men's lives would depend on the way they hung on--all that, railways, sail-lofts, vessels, boats, docks alive with men jumping to their work--skippers, crews, carpenters, riggers, lumpers, all thinking, talking, and, I suppose, dreaming of the season's work ahead--m-m--there was life for a man! Who'd want to work in a store after that?

I stopped at Duncan's wharf and looked at Wesley Marrs's vessel, the Lucy Foster, and then the Colleen Bawn.

And O'Donnell drove the Colleen like a ghost through all that gale, And around 'twas roaring mountains and above 'twas blinding hail,

and so on. And the Nannie O, another vessel that fishermen sang songs about.