With Christ at sea : a religious autobiography

Front matter

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Preface

It may be objected by many who read these lines, that there is a great deal too much of the Ego in them. If so, I can assure the objectors that I sympathise with them deeply. That is my feeling exactly. Yet, when you come to think of it, apart from the fact that I was requested to put my experiences of religious life at sea in this personal form, there really seems to have been no help for it, unless I had set up a fictitious personage and given him my real experiences. This would have been pleasanter for me, no doubt ; would have saved me from many sarcastic remarks, &c. ; but it would, I fear, have defeated the object for which I was asked to write.

I confess I am hopeful about the future of this little book, more so than the circumstances would warrant perhaps, certainly much more so than I have ever been before with my other works. And for this reason. Works of religious fiction abound ;

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they are popular, in many instances deservedly so ; but — they are felt to be fiction, and are not accepted as real pictures of everyday life. In this regard, I have tried, with what ability and experience I have been able to gather, to give a plain real picture of religious life at sea. I feel deeply that my picture is imperfect, very imperfect ; for who can turn his own heart inside out for his fellow-men's inspection without being suspected of posing, insincerity, or some such striving after effect, much less rightly appraise the motives and actions of his shipmates ?

But one can at least try to be simple, truthful, and direct ; one can refuse to be ashamed to own himself a friend of Jesus Christ, or to avow himself a firm believer in the efficacy of prayer for amelioration of all the ills of life.

Lastly, it will be noticed that names and dates are given most sparingly, grudgingly. The reason for this is, I think, obvious. I do not fear libel actions, but I do dread giving unnecessary pain.

F. T. B.

Malta : September 1900.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY I

II. RELIGIOUS LIFE IN THE FO'CSLE . . . . 21

Chapter I

With the most hearty desire to plunge forthwith into the heart of my subject I am compelled to admit the necessity of a few preliminary remarks. For otherwise the question would at once arise, * Under what influences did this man fall at that most plastic time of life when the young mind first awakens ? ' All readers who take an interest in that most important of all subjects, the rise and progress of godliness in the human soul, are properly most curious to know when, where, and how it was that any particular soul under discussion first began to feel the craving after God. To say that no two of such cases are exactly similar would be to utter an obvious platitude, and yet there are vast numbers of otherwise intelligent people who believe in machine-made Christians. Therefore it seems well

B to remind them that there can be no such thing as a mechanical Christian, using the name in its reasonable sense. Mechanical religionists there are in abundance, but the very essence of Christianity is its spirituality as distinguished from mere mechanism.

In my own case, my earliest recollections of religion are indissolubly bound up with three things : First of all being taught by my aunt, who brought me up from infancy to the age of eight and a half years, to kneel at my bedside and say my prayers ; next, at the age of four, my surreptitious reading of ' Paradise Lost ' ; and, lastly, regular attendance at the Lock Chapel in the Harrow Road, where, at a ludicrously early age, I became one of the choir on its first institution.

Now of these three early memories the first requires no comment, yet I dare to say that it was the most important of all. An early acquiring of the habit of prayer, even though it be only formal, must be one of the greatest benefits that a human being can receive. And where, as in my own case, it is accompanied by an earnest endeavour on the part of the teacher to make the young mind grasp the mighty fact of the existence of a Friend able to do anything for the asker, and never more pleased than when being asked confidently for favours quite outside of any human power to grant, its value as a factor in true life is quite beyond estimate. But my dear aunt was, although intensely Evangelical, a rigid formalist. To her mind the fear of God was of more importance than the love of God. He, the Almighty One, was not to be approached familiarly. Set forms and attitudes were as necessary as unwavering faith in order that prayers should be heard, and, although this was more implied than expressed, answer to prayer was quite a minor consideration. The great thing was the saying of prayers, the repetition of certain words got by heart, in a reverent and orderly way. He must not be troubled with requests for such temporal matters as payment of the rent when work was slack, or helping over a difficult task, whether lesson or work. * Grace ' was what He must always be petitioned for (and I did not know what grace was for many years after), and we must always remember that if it were not for Gentle Jesus coming between us and God we should not only never be heard, but, for our sins,

we should be punished with such terrible things

B 2 that they could be only summed up in one comprehensive word — hell.

How is it that I remember all these points so clearly? I do not know. I am aware that the child's memory is normally of wonderful tenacity, but there may have been another sufficient reason. My aunt was an old maid. And she had an intense horror of the foulness of the streets. So, although we were very poor, I was never allowed * out to play.' Fortunately we had a large garden attached to the little house in Desboro' Terrace (now Marlborough Street), Harrow Road, where all my early years were spent, so that my health never suffered from close confinement, but I grew up with a habit of providing my own company, holding long conversations with myself aloud. And since the principal things of interest in my life were more or less connected with religion, that subject was almost always the theme of my solitary discussions. So I suppose it became inevitable that all I heard upon the subject should be stamped ineffaceably upon my memory. So much so that even to-day at any moment I can reproduce for myself a mental picture of my aunt, with spectacles on, solemnly reading her big Bible in our prim little parlour with its horsehair-covered chairs, the old mahogany loo-table with a curiously irregular split running right across it, into which I used to drop pins and wonder where they had gone, and the faded Brussels carpet, threadbare in places, pervading the whole floor. I say pervading, for once I remember it being taken up. I came suddenly into the room ignorant of what had happened, and was horrified ; the place was foreign, its very atmosphere was changed.

I used to sit facing her, my short legs dangling, for those chairs had no rails in front, and holding myself from slipping off the glassy seat by hooking my elbows on the table. This made it natural for me to press my palms against my ears, and thus I discovered that I could at will produce a variety of tone in the somewhat monotonous reading without committing the offence of fidgeting. An almost imperceptible movement of my hands allowed the sound to pour in, or to be shut out of, my ears, and this simple feat gave me very much satisfaction.

I did not like the Bible. I cannot remember at that time ever reading it for choice. That is easy to understand. Bible reading was a task that must be performed. Not to read so many verses every day, with treble or four times the quantity on Sunday, was to offend God greatly. Understanding what one read was desirable, of course, but not necessary — the great thing was to read. Therefore I took no interest in the Bible for a long time. I read it aloud. I stumbled over the Prayer Book version of the Psalms (which we always read in those days at the Lock Chapel turn-about with the minister), and was glad when the reading was done. Then there came a summer when, finding the mornings interminably long in bed, I took to climbing out and hunting for something to read.

I was always put to bed at seven, but as my aunt did not go to bed till midnight, getting up again was quite another thing. She, poor woman, was so tired with her dressmaking that her usual hour for rising was half-past eight or nine, and as until she got up I was also compelled to remain in bed, the time from four o'clock A.M. or thereabouts hung very heavy. On the mantelpiece there were a few books, of which I only remember a New Testament, somebody's advice to young servants, a cookery book, and a small copy of

* Paradise Lost/ The two latter I used to take into bed with me as silently as possible, for fear of disturbing my aunt, with whom I slept, and read. But the cookery book soon lost its interest, while the poem, in spite of its long, hard words, of its blank verse, and of its deep learning, fascinated, enthralled me. Let no one ever tell me again of such and such a book being beyond or above a child. Only let it be a good book, and you may safely leave it to the child's discretion, fancy, imagination, what you will. My recollections of the glamour that wonderful poem cast over me are almost poignantly pleasurable. It was all so real to me. I never for one instant doubted the absolute truthfulness of any part of the story, and I well remember how, after reading that part where Milton speaks of the Almighty hanging out in heaven His golden scales to decide whether the celestial armies should part or fight, that I went about softly, imagining the awful conflict impending in the air, and the mighty hand of God balancing the issues. I do verily believe that early devouring of Milton has tinged my whole life.

Presently came Sunday school, under the superintendence of the gentle lady to whom with afifectionate remembrance I have dedicated the * Cruise of the " Cachalot." ' I do not remember much of her teaching, because I was personally in a class taught by a dentist nanved Barker, who, with his brother, was a devoted friend of the school. But Miss Hensley, as superintendent, was beloved by all. Not one of us but felt prouder of the privilege of being invited home to tea with her on Sunday afternoon, and being honoured with the burden of her cloak and bag of books, than as if we had suddenly been called upon to command a ship or drive a fire-engine. At that school, on the bridge beneath which is Westbourne Park Railway Station, I passed many a happy hour, but I cannot recall any impression more definite than that of the loveableness and the patience of the teachers, and the general mischievousness of the boys and girls.

May I say, without being suspected of egotism, that I was a good little boy? I think so, because everyone will realise that under the firm, wise, and kind rule of Auntie, it was most unlikely that I should be anything else. Most likely I was a terrible little prig, and I have no doubt but that I was cordially hated by the more human boys, who were disgusted at my smug virtue, virtue that had never been put to the test but once, when it broke all to pieces. It was an awful downfall. I have said that we were very poor ; so that my perquisites being all the farthings that came into the house must have testified to great generosity on Auntie's part. But I was not allowed to spend one on any pretence. They were all solemnly put into a tin box with a slit in the lid, whose sides were ornamented with bees busy hiving honey.

Now, whether, after I went to day-school at seven years of age, the sight of other boys spending money brought upon me a raging desire to do the same or not, I do not know. All I remember is that one night, having duly elaborated my plan of campaign, I carried up to bed with me an old knife and a pencil-box. And after having said my prayers and kissed Auntie good-night, I lay counting her retreating footsteps down the stairs. Then creeping out of bed I drew aside the blind so that the bright moonlight should stream in. And with hardened heart I tousled that money-box until quite a heap of farthings lay upon the bedquilt. I did not take them all — ^just a few I left as a salve to my conscience or in the hope that the breaking-in would not be noticed. Then, placing the looted farthings in the pencil-case (one of the old-fashioned ones like a truncheon) I hid it away, crept into bed again, and went to sleep.

I awoke in the morning without a shade of remorse, only anxious to get out of the house with my plunder. That was easily managed, and at dinner-time, instead of coming home straightway, I called certain of my intimates to me, and together we invaded a shop where they sold ginger-beer, doubtful fruit, and sweet-stuff. I spent royally, enjoying to the full the delightful sensation for the first time. But I had so many farthings (nearly two shillings'-worth) that there were still many left at school-time. I told a lie about being kept in to account for my delay in appearing to dinner, and still I did not feel any compunction. During the afternoon at school I became so inordinately puffed up at the exalted pinnacle I had reached in the estimation of my school-fellows (as I fondly imagined) that I waxed reckless and arrogant. I brandished my pencil-case, rattling the wealth it still contained, when suddenly the lid flew off, and in a jingling shower of bronze the farthings

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flew in every direction all over the schoolroom floor.

The memory of the inquiry that followed is still painful. How step by step my iniquities were unveiled, how eagerly the partakers of my bounty gave evidence against me, until, under guard, I was marched home and handed over to my aunt, with a full account of what had happened. Then came the hardest part to bear. Auntie cried ; and she was not given to tears as a rule. She cried bitterly to find that after all her care, her charge had suddenly developed into a thief and a liar. Then feeling that it was her duty so to do, she bought a penny cane and beat me, every blow, I am sure, hurting her far more than it did me. The whole episode was a landmark, and the lessons it taught exceedingly valuable. The most valuable of all, of course, did not appeal to me then as it does now, viz. that cloistered virtue is impotent, that inability to steal does not make a thief honest, and that ignorance is by no means innocence.

But I must get on. There came presently that dread event about which I cannot think even now without a shudder — my sudden hurling out of this haven into a troubled sea of violence. Imagine, if you can, what it must have meant to a child such as 1 was, at the age of nine, being transferred without a word of warning from the atmosphere of my aunt's quiet, godly home to a London laundry of over thirty years ago in Kensal New Town. The language I now heard continually was truly almost unintelligible at first, but I soon began to learn what it meant. There were a dozen women employed — coarse, shameless, and in their talk as lewd as any sailors I have ever been shipmate with. Moreover, I was tried physically. From being so tenderly cared for that I was hardly expected to wash myself, I was now made to turn the mangle and wringing-machine, to scrub the dirtiest of the dusters, &c., to go long, weary journeys with parcels such as I could carry, and do all to a running accompaniment of blows and abuse and shortness of food. My hours were from six in the morning until eleven at night, except on Sundays, when I sat, like Cinderella, after the dinner things had been washed up and put away, by the ashes of the kitchen fire, with no other company than the black-beetles and crickets. No more church or Sunday-school now. But I still kept up the habit of saying my prayers, though it never occurred to me to ask God for deliverance. That was entirely due, I know, to the way in which, as I have before hinted at, it had been instilled into my mind that we were only to ask for spiritual blessings from our Father, except in the disciple's prayer, which, of course, became perfunctory from innumerable repetitions. I may have been told that it was a good thing to ask God for anything I wanted and confidently look for a prompt answer to my request, but if so I have no recollection thereof whatever.

But although I made no audible moan, my dumb longings were great. Some day, but not just yet, I may attempt a description of those dreadful days, extending over nearly three years, during which I struggled against the fate that I felt was undeserved, yet did not know how to escape. Then I became familiar with all forms of evil, all expressions that men and women use in a sort of ignorant defiance of the Unseen Powers they fear and hate. A sort of act of spiritual suicide, I suppose. But I did not talk like that myself, and I still said my prayers, although nobody knew down here, nor did I myself know why I kept up the practice.

Then came the second great change in my

life I went to sea. The plain bald facts of my

going I have related in the ' Log of a Sea Waif/ but I have not told, because I am not able to tell, of my utter loneliness and heart-hunger. I could not help but feel that liberty lay before me, freedom from starvation and all the vicissitudes of an Arab life ashore, but the sea loomed before me as a vast desert, all unknown. I had no friends on board the ship, and when, as we left the dockhead, the mate's wife — a comely Shields woman — stooped and kissed me, saying, ^ God bless ye, ma puir chieV my heart overflowed in a few unaccustomed tears. Boys, such as I then was, do not weep much as a rule : they learn to endure hardness early, and without pitying themselves too greatly.

As I watched the familiar landmarks of London recede, I felt more wretched than I have ever done before or since. True, I was leaving no friends, I had no single tie, but neither had I any enthusiasm for the sea — only dread, only a sick feeling of doubt and terror. London represented to me all that I had ever known, its very stones were familiar acquaintances, and in default of human friends I had grown, I suppose, much attached to inanimate things.

On board the ship little notice was taken 01 me for the first day. I was cabin-boy, my duty being to attend upon the captain, mate, and second mate, under the orders of the mahogany-faced old man who was supposed to fill the double office of cook and steward. All that I had to do I could do fairly well, for housemaid's work was perfectly familiar to me, and it did not over-tax my puny strength. But I was not of use long. Even before we left the river, the smell of the foul little cuddy almost made me ill, and from it I was unable to escape, as most of my work lay there. When, however, we cleared the Nore and were being dragged ruthlessly seaward by a powerful tug-boat in the teeth of a rising gale, when white sheets of spray swept from one end of the miserable old barque to the other, so that there was no dry corner to be found except in the cuddy, I felt as if I was going to die. I remember creeping like a hurt dog under the quarter of the long-boat which was lashed on the main hatch, and there, wet to the skin and kept so by the never-ceasing spray, I passed into a comatose state at the bottom of a pit of misery, to which death himself would have come as an angel of deliverance.

Such an experience would, I venture to assert, be impossible to-day. For a mere child of between eleven and twelve to be thus left to live or die as it might chance, without anyone caring, without anyone coming to see, would not be permitted on board any ship now. Yet I was esteemed fortunate in being left alone. I know of cases where boys as ill as I then was have been hunted out of a lair like mine with blows and curses and driven aloft. To the throes of their sickness was added the agony of fear, clinging to the swaying rigging in the blackness of the night amid the howling of the angry wind. This was spared me. Afterwards, when I had grown stronger, I was often sent aloft to tasks too heavy for me, and far away up in the air have felt all my energies depart in the weakness of sea-sickness, not daring to come down and leave the sail unfurled. But now I was at least suffered to lie quietly and endure.

In saying that I was utterly neglected, I did one poor creature an injustice — a negro lad, five or six years older than myself, who was also in evil case, nipped by the bitter wind of an English February, and beaten frequently by anyone who chose to exercise the shameful privilege. When I recovered consciousness — I don't know how long after my first creeping in there — I found Jem sitting by my side, endeavouring to coax me into swallowing a morsel of soaked biscuit and drink a drop of water. Sententiously and with a quaintness that I found irresistibly funny after I got well, he was quoting the Bible to me. I found when I got to know him that he had been a Sunday-school teacher at home in Jamaica, which accounted for his knowledge of Holy Writ, but did not account for the delightful way in which he applied it to every circumstance of his daily life.

* Naow, leetle boay, you mus' eat somefin, V else yew gwine die. An' den, yew know, yew gwine be all right, ob co'se ; but yo duty tords Gord am ter lib s' long s' ever yew kin. Wy, yewse mos' s' highly favered 's me. 'Oom de Lord lobef He chasenef, 'n skurjef ebery son 'oom He recebef, don' y' know ? Now dey isn't many folks roun' dat's a-getting maw skurjin dan I is jes now, 'n sence de dear Lord less de mate go on wid it, well den de Lord Hesef 'sponsible, see ! So I feels

C laik a son fo' shuah, a son wuts belobed, too — now mine I tole yer. 'N yew, wy, bress Gord, youse bein' chaysen too. Nudder way, ob co'se. De good Lord knows better dan treat all his chillen de same ; but neb' mine, you'se a son, an' a deah son too. Don' you leggo dat ar.'

So he talked away, the mere fact of his presence comforting me, apart from his cheery talk, until at last I managed to swallow a few morsels. And then that poor fellow prayed such a prayer as I had never heard before. Strange chills ran through me as I listened, a kind of awe at the fact that here was a man, and a black man at that, who seemed to be on more intimate terms with Almighty God than was safe. He talked to God, reminded Him of all sorts of things, at the same time admitting that it was not possible for Him to forget anything concerning the least of His creatures, but emphasising the fact that it did himself good to tell so sympathetic a listener all that was in his mind. He prayed for everybody on board, especially for the captain, who, he said, needed most to be prayed for, because he was probably the worst of all the crew ; but for me he reserved his final effort. And when he had finished, I was better ; I had been educated into the high knowledge that henceforth prayer was not merely the repetition of certain formulae, but a real means of communication between God and my small self That I didn't even need to kneel down and fold my hands and shut my eyes, or even speak aloud.

This, coming upon all that had gone before, was of the most inestimable benefit to me. I was not miserable any longer. My mind was fortified, and my body soon accommodated itself to the motion of the apple-sided old vessel, so that I was able to get about my work. I liked the cabin no better, for I could not get used to the foulness of its atmosphere nor its mental gloom. There was no conversation held between the officers and the skipper. They sat at their meals in grim silence as if bound by some awful rule to waste no word upon each other. The only place where I might legitimately go for companionship was the galley ; but the cook, though talkative enough, and, in a ferocious way, inclined to be companionable with me, could only express himself in terms that were almost entirely filthy or blasphemous, while his tales were of a kind that were painful to hear, apart from the language in which they were told.

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Now I had been expressly forbidden to go into the men's quarters — the fo'csle. It was so bad a place to be in, leaky, dark, and mephitic, that one would hardly have thought any prohibition necessary, but there was cheerfulness and animated conversation there. Besides, the men spoke as kindly to me as they were able. In fact, all the kind words I got came from them ; and lastly, Jem, the negro boy, was there. So gradually I took to creeping forward after dark, and sitting in the fo'csle with the men, interested beyond measure by their conversation (which was not always of the cleanest), and feeling at times quite satisfied with my lot. This, of course, could only have one ending. I was soundly flogged, and threatened that if ever I went into the fo'csle again I should be cast out of the cabin altogether. For a week I abstained, until the misery of the cabin grew unbearable, and again I transgressed. Another rope's-ending, and then banishment, to my exceeding delight ; my satisfaction fully compensating me for my bruises.

Thus I became a fo'csle hand, and never but once, and that only for a short passage, have I filled a steward's place since.

Chapter II

In becoming a denizen of the fo'csle, I entered unconsciously upon the fourth great change in my life. Of the first I cannot now speak ; it happened before my memory was born ; the second was that sorrowful out-casting from the serene haven of my aunt's home into the tempest-tossed sea of the laundry and the streets ; the third was going to sea. But this last change was, I think, the most momentous of all. For I was now, at an age when most boys are mere children, admitted to the real companionship of men on such terms of equality as few boys ever experience until they can be rightly called boys no longer.

The circumstances were peculiar. All the conditions of service in this old ship were so bad, food and accommodation being alike abominable and her hull and rigging so rotten, that it was constructive murder to send her to sea. Had the master and officers been genial, sympathetic men, determined to make the best of things and doing their best to hearten up the ill-used crew, much might have been dpne to lighten the gloom. But the skipper's temper was morose and vindictive. His face wore a continual scowl, and he never spoke to anyone, even the mate, without arousing a bitter feeling of resentment in their breasts by his opprobrious words.

So that his treatment of me was taken by the fo'csle hands as a studied insult to them, as one more item in the black account against him, and they determined to do what in them lay by their treatment of me to annoy him. All agreed to pet me and make my life in the fo'csle as happy as it could well be. And in my watch on deck, whenever I was given a task they considered too hard for me, one of them would rather ostentatiously come to my assistance, all the more readily if the old man were in sight. In my watch below I was always being taught something useful. The mysteries of knots, splices, seizings, bends, cringles, and all the manifold intricacies of sailorising were unfolded to me with the greatest patience and kindness, although the teachers often squabbled among themselves over the exact method in which this or that piece of work should be done. One man, a big Yorkshireman we called Joe, laid himself out to teach me the mending and making of clothes, neglecting his own sewing, and making what he called a 'tarpaulin muster,' that is, a general collection from his watchmates of any old garments they could spare to fit me up with what I sorely needed, sufficient clothes.