Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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Beneath pleasant skies we plodded southward to our destined port, arriving uneventfully at Antigua after a passage of thirty-five days.

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Despite the inroads made upon sail by steam, a goodly fleet of sailing ships still survive, many of them magnificent specimens not only of marine architecture, but also of the cunning handiwork of the modern “rigger.” The enormous sail-area shown by some of these ships and the immense spread of their yards would have staggered the daring skippers of forty years ago, when the China tea-clippers were the greyhounds of the seas, and the Yankee flyers were wiping the eyes of their sturdy British compeers. But in order to see these majestic vessels at their best it is necessary to be on board one of them on a voyage to or from the Far East. Their troubles are often many and their hindrances great until they reach those Southern parallels where, after a spell of “doldrums” varying with the season, they pick up those brave west winds that, unhindered, sweep in almost constant procession around the landless Southern slopes of the world. This is no place for weaklings either among ships or men. If a passage is to be made and a vessel’s reputation for swiftness, apart from steam-power, to be either sustained or acquired, here is the field. There is none like unto it. Not only should canvas, hemp, and steel be of the best, but the skipper must be stout of heart, not to be daunted by threatening skies, mountainous seas, or wandering islands of ice. More than all these, he must to-day be prepared to face the probability of his scanty crew being quite unable to handle the gigantic pinions of his vessel should the favouring breeze rise, as it often does, to such a plenitude of power as to make it most dangerous for them to be longer spread.