Sailing Alone Around The World | Page 4

for an old sailor to do? I was born in the breezes,
and I had studied the sea as perhaps few men have studied it, neglecting
all else. Next in attractiveness, after seafaring, came ship-building. I
longed to be master in both professions, and in a small way, in time, I
accomplished my desire. From the decks of stout ships in the worst
gales I had made calculations as to the size and sort of ship safest for all
weather and all seas. Thus the voyage which I am now to narrate was a
natural outcome not only of my love of adventure, but of my lifelong
experience.
One midwinter day of 1892, in Boston, where I had been cast up from
old ocean, so to speak, a year or two before, I was cogitating whether I
should apply for a command, and again eat my bread and butter on the
sea, or go to work at the shipyard, when I met an old acquaintance, a
whaling-captain, who said: "Come to Fairhaven and I'll give you a ship.
But," he added, "she wants some repairs." The captain's terms, when
fully explained, were more than satisfactory to me. They included all
the assistance I would require to fit the craft for sea. I was only too glad
to accept, for I had already found that I could not obtain work in the
shipyard without first paying fifty dollars to a society, and as for a ship
to command--there were not enough ships to go round. Nearly all our
tall vessels had been cut down for coal-barges, and were being
ignominiously towed by the nose from port to port, while many worthy

captains addressed themselves to Sailors' Snug Harbor.
The next day I landed at Fairhaven, opposite New Bedford, and found
that my friend had something of a joke on me. For seven years the joke
had been on him. The "ship" proved to be a very antiquated sloop
called the Spray, which the neighbors declared had been built in the
year 1. She was affectionately propped up in a field, some distance
from salt water, and was covered with canvas. The people of Fairhaven,
I hardly need say, are thrifty and observant. For seven years they had
asked, "I wonder what Captain Eben Pierce is going to do with the old
Spray?" The day I appeared there was a buzz at the gossip exchange: at
last some one had come and was actually at work on the old Spray.
"Breaking her up, I s'pose?" "No; going to rebuild her." Great was the
amazement. "Will it pay?" was the question which for a year or more I
answered by declaring that I would make it pay.
My ax felled a stout oak-tree near by for a keel, and Farmer Howard,
for a small sum of money, hauled in this and enough timbers for the
frame of the new vessel. I rigged a steam-box and a pot for a boiler.
The timbers for ribs, being straight saplings, were dressed and steamed
till supple, and then bent over a log, where they were secured till set.
Something tangible appeared every day to show for my labor, and the
neighbors made the work sociable. It was a great day in the Spray
shipyard when her new stem was set up and fastened to the new keel.
Whaling-captains came from far to survey it. With one voice they
pronounced it "A 1," and in their opinion "fit to smash ice." The oldest
captain shook my hand warmly when the breast-hooks were put in,
declaring that he could see no reason why the Spray should not "cut in
bow-head" yet off the coast of Greenland. The much-esteemed
stem-piece was from the butt of the smartest kind of a pasture oak. It
afterward split a coral patch in two at the Keeling Islands, and did not
receive a blemish. Better timber for a ship than pasture white oak never
grew. The breast-hooks, as well as all the ribs, were of this wood, and
were steamed and bent into shape as required. It was hard upon March
when I began work in earnest; the weather was cold; still, there were
plenty of inspectors to back me with advice. When a whaling-captain
hove in sight I just rested on my adz awhile and "gammed" with him.

New Bedford, the home of whaling-captains, is connected with
Fairhaven by a bridge, and the walking is good. They never "worked
along up" to the shipyard too often for me. It was the charming tales
about arctic whaling that inspired me to put a double set of
breast-hooks in the Spray, that she might shunt ice.
The seasons came quickly while I worked. Hardly were the ribs of the
sloop up before apple-trees were in bloom.